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
n2008___this_study is a research project	1111	06-jul-2018	99.3
moore_cave is a cave	1111	06-jul-2018	100.0
makeshift_operating_table is a household item	1111	06-jul-2018	94.5
dengue_fever_viruses is a virus	1111	06-jul-2018	97.7
breakaway_trade_unions is a trade union	1111	06-jul-2018	91.5
hanoi is a city located in the country vietnam	1116	12-sep-2018	100.0
the sports leage nascar uses the venue bristol_motor_speedway	1114	25-aug-2018	100.0
morton_plant is a hospital in the city clearwater	1116	12-sep-2018	100.0
scuba is a sport taught in the country india	1115	03-sep-2018	98.4
secondary_pests is called mites	1116	12-sep-2018	99.6