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
lecanidae is an invertebrate	1112	24-jul-2018	95.1
kror is a radio station	1111	06-jul-2018	96.9
kristina_williams is a North American person	1111	06-jul-2018	91.2
numerous_scholarly_papers is a kind of media	1111	06-jul-2018	99.8
hudsons_bay is a geopolitical entity that is an organization	1111	06-jul-2018	94.5
the country seychelles uses the currency rupees	1116	12-sep-2018	100.0
national is a bank that bought abu_dhabi_commercial_bank	1114	25-aug-2018	100.0
canoe is a sport taught in the country __america	1116	12-sep-2018	100.0
spadina_aquarium is an aquarium in the city toronto	1116	12-sep-2018	100.0
commonwealth_countries is a generalization of canada	1116	12-sep-2018	93.8