Read the Web
Research Project at Carnegie Mellon University

NELL: Never-Ending Language Learning

Browse the Knowledge Base!

Can computers learn to read? We think so. "Read the Web" is a research project that attempts to create a computer system that learns over time to read the web. Since January 2010, our computer system called NELL (Never-Ending Language Learner) has been running continuously, attempting to perform two tasks each day:

• First, it attempts to "read," or extract facts from text found in hundreds of millions of web pages (e.g., playsInstrument(George_Harrison, guitar)).
• Second, it attempts to improve its reading competence, so that tomorrow it can extract more facts from the web, more accurately.

So far, NELL has accumulated over 50 million candidate beliefs by reading the web, and it is considering these at different levels of confidence. NELL has high confidence in 2,810,379 of these beliefs — these are displayed on this website. It is not perfect, but NELL is learning. You can track NELL's progress below or @cmunell on Twitter, browse and download its knowledge base, read more about our technical approach, or join the discussion group.

Recently-Learned Facts

instance	iteration	date learned	confidence
litchfield_park is a geopolitical entity that is an organization	1111	06-jul-2018	94.7
private_master_bathroom is an office building room	1111	06-jul-2018	98.6
montserratians is an ethnic group	1111	06-jul-2018	92.1
greenwich_unison is a trade union	1111	06-jul-2018	93.5
n2000_national_league_division_series is a sports game	1111	06-jul-2018	99.9
texas_longhorns is a sports team that plays the sport football	1116	12-sep-2018	99.8
francis_slay is the leader of the city st_louis	1116	12-sep-2018	100.0
yma_sumac held the position of soprano	1115	03-sep-2018	100.0
spiders is an animal that is a kind of widow	1111	06-jul-2018	100.0
china is a country located in the geopolitical location key_countries	1111	06-jul-2018	100.0