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
college_station_arkansas is a beach	1111	06-jul-2018	96.0
unlevelness is a character trait	1111	06-jul-2018	99.4
hattersheim is a city	1111	06-jul-2018	99.9
plantation_style_shutters is something found in or on buildings	1111	06-jul-2018	98.9
easter_egg_hunting is a hobby	1111	06-jul-2018	95.7
bed is often found in lodge_rooms	1116	12-sep-2018	96.9
ice_hockey is a sport with fans in the country __america	1116	12-sep-2018	99.6
link looks like cable	1112	24-jul-2018	98.4
lancome is headquartered in the country france_france	1116	12-sep-2018	100.0
john_taylor is a musician who is part of duran_duran	1115	03-sep-2018	96.9