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
death_on_the_nile is a book	1111	06-jul-2018	100.0
james_lavistown_cheese is a cheese	1111	06-jul-2018	92.2
famous_beer is a beverage	1111	06-jul-2018	95.5
lush_river_valleys can be a part of a landscape	1111	06-jul-2018	99.2
plant_uses is a plant	1111	06-jul-2018	90.3
bernie_mac is a person who died at the age of 50	1116	12-sep-2018	100.0
anne_perry wrote the book the_silent_cry	1111	06-jul-2018	100.0
n7_30 is the time of the event minneapolis_bicyclist_in_critical_condition_after_morning_accident_at_snelling_and_summit	1116	12-sep-2018	100.0
downtown_marriott_hotel is a hotel in the city los_angeles_ca	1116	12-sep-2018	100.0
air_mail is headquartered in the country usa	1116	12-sep-2018	100.0