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
broken_bow_lake is a lake	1111	06-jul-2018	100.0
thomas_hernandez is an astronaut	1111	06-jul-2018	100.0
cherokee_bear_zoo is an aquarium	1111	06-jul-2018	100.0
master_bath_tub is an item often found in a bathroom	1111	06-jul-2018	99.8
middlesex_gmc is a company	1111	06-jul-2018	95.4
reductil is a drug worked on by abbot_laboratories	1114	25-aug-2018	93.8
henry001 held the position of leader	1114	25-aug-2018	90.2
kxan is a TV station in the city austin	1116	12-sep-2018	99.6
steve001 is a person who belongs to the organization history	1112	24-jul-2018	96.9
gary is a person who has attended the school high_school	1114	25-aug-2018	96.9