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
canopied_tree is a plant	1111	06-jul-2018	99.7
morning_sky is a visualizable attribute	1111	06-jul-2018	90.6
famous_facebook is a website	1111	06-jul-2018	93.1
chilled_sugar is a fruit	1111	06-jul-2018	99.7
kulr is a TV station	1111	06-jul-2018	99.5
port_columbus_international_airport is an attraction that will be fall in city columbus	1116	12-sep-2018	96.9
state works for senate	1112	24-jul-2018	100.0
john_kerry was born in the state or province colorado	1116	12-sep-2018	100.0
joseph_conrad wrote the book the_heart_of_darkness	1111	06-jul-2018	96.9
iconic_characters is a generalization of james_dean	1115	03-sep-2018	100.0