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
bill___bob_s_restaurant is a restaurant	1111	06-jul-2018	100.0
upper_airway_passage is a part of the body	1111	06-jul-2018	91.5
n1996___2007 is a year	1111	06-jul-2018	100.0
clostridium_thermobutyricum is a bacterium	1111	06-jul-2018	100.0
national_journal_magazine is a website	1111	06-jul-2018	100.0
lee_boulevard is a street in the city savannah	1116	12-sep-2018	93.8
sixers is a sports team that plays against magic	1111	06-jul-2018	99.9
hub_airports is a generalization of sfo	1114	25-aug-2018	100.0
jacob is the father of reuben	1116	12-sep-2018	99.3
the sports team new_york_mets was the winner of first_world_series	1116	12-sep-2018	96.9