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
blue_ribbon_fruit_cake is a baked good	1111	06-jul-2018	100.0
broad_river is a river	1111	06-jul-2018	100.0
class_capacity is a character trait	1111	06-jul-2018	99.6
small_stars is a geometric shape	1111	06-jul-2018	96.3
psp_headphones_with_remote is a consumer electronic device	1111	06-jul-2018	99.9
cells is a subpart of the body within bone_marrow	1111	06-jul-2018	100.0
george_w_ is a U.S. politician who holds the office of governor	1114	25-aug-2018	96.9
thomas_menino is the leader of the city boston	1116	12-sep-2018	100.0
tulsa_international is a building located in the city tulsa	1116	12-sep-2018	96.9
bruges is a city located in the country belgium	1116	12-sep-2018	99.9