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
white_headed_buffalo_weaver is a bird	1112	24-jul-2018	100.0
bisnis_indonesia is a website	1111	06-jul-2018	92.2
battle_of_the_hornburg is a military conflict	1111	06-jul-2018	100.0
heart_ablation is a medical procedure	1111	06-jul-2018	100.0
solidness is a physical characteristic	1113	15-aug-2018	100.0
first_data is a company headquartered in the city atlanta	1116	12-sep-2018	100.0
nina_tassler is a top member of cbs_evening_news	1116	12-sep-2018	95.8
bed is often found in fireplace	1114	25-aug-2018	100.0
bt is headquartered in the city central_london	1116	12-sep-2018	100.0
sony competes with the company responsible for launch_of_xbox360	1116	12-sep-2018	100.0