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
cross_keys_shopping_center is a shopping mall	1111	06-jul-2018	100.0
bille_brown is an Australian person	1111	06-jul-2018	99.9
scott_credit_union is a bank	1111	06-jul-2018	100.0
recruiting_investment is an economic sector	1111	06-jul-2018	99.7
n14_6_percentage_points is a machine-learning algorithm	1111	06-jul-2018	99.5
the_times is a company headquartered in the city new_york	1116	12-sep-2018	100.0
barkston_gardens_hotel is a park in the city central_london	1116	12-sep-2018	100.0
flannels is a clothing item to go with shirts	1111	06-jul-2018	93.8
kansas is the home city of the sports team rajasthan_royals	1116	12-sep-2018	100.0
ferrets refers to more than one ferret	1111	06-jul-2018	100.0