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
find_out_about_wikipedia is a bone	1115	03-sep-2018	92.3
new_york_real_estate_journal is a blog	1111	06-jul-2018	100.0
technical_education is a political issue	1111	06-jul-2018	99.9
groups___meeting_services_hotel is a building	1111	06-jul-2018	93.5
l_acquisizione is a wine	1111	06-jul-2018	99.5
european_countries is a generalization of canada	1116	12-sep-2018	96.9
vauxhall is a specific automobile maker dealer in _uk	1116	12-sep-2018	100.0
ontario is a state or province located in the geopolitical location north_america	1111	06-jul-2018	99.9
hong_kong_special_administrative_region is a country also known as china	1111	06-jul-2018	98.4
knives is a type of weapon produced in china	1111	06-jul-2018	100.0