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
more_conference_information is a scientific term	1111	06-jul-2018	100.0
poxvirus_infections is a virus	1111	06-jul-2018	94.9
mercury_zephyr_engines is a kind of automobile engine	1111	06-jul-2018	100.0
joan_yankowitz is an African person	1111	06-jul-2018	90.7
guo_fazeng is an Asian person	1111	06-jul-2018	100.0
wsyx_tv is a TV affiliate of the network abc_news	1116	12-sep-2018	100.0
the sport baseball was played at n1956_world_series	1116	12-sep-2018	100.0
sue has husband tony	1116	12-sep-2018	96.9
children is an animal that can develop asperger	1113	15-aug-2018	100.0
surrey is a city located in the state or province british_columbia	1116	12-sep-2018	100.0