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
domestic_clock is an item found on a wall	1111	06-jul-2018	99.6
cheque_bank_draft is a cognitive action	1111	06-jul-2018	90.0
william_borden is a criminal	1111	06-jul-2018	100.0
david_finley is a chef	1111	06-jul-2018	100.0
coralville_iowa is an island	1111	06-jul-2018	96.9
denver is the capital city of the state or province colorado	1116	12-sep-2018	100.0
fellhauer plays the athletic team position left_center	1114	25-aug-2018	96.9
biden is a U.S. politician who holds the office of vice_presidential	1113	15-aug-2018	99.6
lam is a city also known as los_angeles_ca	1111	06-jul-2018	100.0
the companies business_week and journal compete with eachother	1111	06-jul-2018	100.0