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
terence_morris is a chef	1111	06-jul-2018	99.9
big_brass_bed is a kind of furniture	1111	06-jul-2018	99.8
alberto_restaurant is a restaurant	1111	06-jul-2018	100.0
hampden_volvo is an automobile manufacturer	1111	06-jul-2018	95.3
wakoopa is a website	1111	06-jul-2018	91.8
michigan is a state that is bordered by the state north_dakota	1113	15-aug-2018	93.8
the country southwest_africa uses the currency rand	1116	12-sep-2018	100.0
room_1495 is a room in the building biomedical_science_tower	1116	12-sep-2018	100.0
paramount_hotel is a hotel in the city new_york	1116	12-sep-2018	100.0
cricket is a sport with fans in the country india	1115	03-sep-2018	100.0