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
theta_alpha_phi is a professional organization	1111	06-jul-2018	91.6
cutlery_set is an item found in the kitchen	1111	06-jul-2018	100.0
york_college_of_pennsylvania is a school	1116	12-sep-2018	98.4
charitable_fund is a character trait	1111	06-jul-2018	99.8
nissan_patrol_turbo_diesel is a kind of vehicle	1111	06-jul-2018	99.9
rio is the capital city of the country the_united_kingdom	1116	12-sep-2018	93.8
mopti is a city that lies on the river niger	1111	06-jul-2018	100.0
waldorf is a hotel in the city new_york	1116	12-sep-2018	100.0
syria is the location of the event israel_bombs_syria_army_targets_after_golan_attack	1113	15-aug-2018	100.0
european_countries is a generalization of switzerland_switzerland	1116	12-sep-2018	100.0