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
n12_50 is a term used by physicists	1111	06-jul-2018	100.0
environmental_victory is an event outcome	1111	06-jul-2018	91.8
table_occurrences is a household item	1111	06-jul-2018	95.9
mercury_montego_engines is a kind of automobile engine	1111	06-jul-2018	100.0
information_personal_data is a scientific term	1111	06-jul-2018	100.0
lebanon is the capital city of the country lebanon	1116	12-sep-2018	100.0
hewlett_packard_co is an organization known by the acronym hp	1116	12-sep-2018	100.0
mccarran is an airport in the city las_vegas	1116	12-sep-2018	100.0
clint_eastwood is a person who belongs to the organization carmel_by_the_sea	1111	06-jul-2018	100.0
father is the parent of jesus_christ	1115	03-sep-2018	100.0