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
the_hip is a musical artist	1111	06-jul-2018	99.6
san_francisco_oakland_san_jose is a city	1111	06-jul-2018	99.8
lyra_perfecta is a musical instrument	1111	06-jul-2018	93.8
la_vicaria_arch_bridge is a bridge	1111	06-jul-2018	97.1
hla_dr is a protein	1111	06-jul-2018	91.0
porter was born in the city cambridge	1116	12-sep-2018	100.0
state_children_s_health_insurance_program__schip is a synonym for chip	1111	06-jul-2018	93.8
john_lennon is a person who was written about in rolling_stone	1115	03-sep-2018	100.0
oliver_stone starred in the movie jfk	1111	06-jul-2018	100.0
modern_art is a museum in the city new_york	1116	12-sep-2018	100.0