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
otok_cave is a cave	1111	06-jul-2018	99.8
left_temporoparietal_junction is a kind of brain tissue	1111	06-jul-2018	98.9
n03_06_2009 is a dataset used within the scientific field of machine learning	1112	24-jul-2018	100.0
hotel_lindenufer is a place to ski	1111	06-jul-2018	90.6
vespertilionidae is a mollusk	1111	06-jul-2018	100.0
giuliani represents the region new	1115	03-sep-2018	95.7
suburban_rail is a transportation system located in the city central_london	1116	12-sep-2018	100.0
evergreen_hospital_medical_center is a hospital in the city kirkland	1116	12-sep-2018	100.0
north is a street in the city washington___d___c__	1116	12-sep-2018	100.0
shrimps is a type of crustaceans	1113	15-aug-2018	100.0