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
bangalore_international_airport is a transportation system	1111	06-jul-2018	100.0
english_the is a language	1111	06-jul-2018	99.2
ground_cocoa_beans is an agricultural product	1111	06-jul-2018	98.8
philadelphia is a location	1113	15-aug-2018	100.0
reconciliation_agreement is a TV show	1111	06-jul-2018	100.0
henry was born in the city new_york	1116	12-sep-2018	99.2
columbia is a city also known as santa_cruz	1112	24-jul-2018	93.8
mary is the mother of jesus_jesus	1116	12-sep-2018	93.8
britney_spears and alli_sims are family members	1111	06-jul-2018	100.0
barack_obama is a U.S. politician endorsed by the U.S. politician biden	1112	24-jul-2018	99.8