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
jason_streitfeld is a writer	1111	06-jul-2018	91.4
feline_bladder_infection is a disease	1111	06-jul-2018	90.2
great_land_crab is a crustacean	1111	06-jul-2018	99.7
n12088 is a ZIP code	1111	06-jul-2018	99.8
mohd_fairuz is an African person	1111	06-jul-2018	90.6
the coach alex_rios won the trophy or tournament world_series	1115	03-sep-2018	100.0
chicago_south is the home city of the sports team northwestern	1116	12-sep-2018	100.0
virgin is the mother of christ_child	1116	12-sep-2018	99.2
restaurant_toqu_ is a restaurant in the city montreal	1116	12-sep-2018	100.0
terry_bowden coaches the team akron	1116	12-sep-2018	96.9