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
global_networking is a physical action	1112	24-jul-2018	92.5
town_accountant is a job position	1111	06-jul-2018	95.1
nodes_pelvic_area is a part of the body	1111	06-jul-2018	100.0
timgad is a city	1111	06-jul-2018	99.8
one_hour__ is a parlour game	1111	06-jul-2018	100.0
ospel belongs to the ethnic group swiss	1116	12-sep-2018	100.0
fluorescent looks like display001	1114	25-aug-2018	93.8
james has wife anne	1116	12-sep-2018	99.2
blackhawks is headquartered in the state or province new_york	1116	12-sep-2018	99.6
abbotsford is a city located in the state or province wisconsin	1116	12-sep-2018	93.8