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
william_yardley is a Canadian person	1111	06-jul-2018	100.0
hemorrhoidal_plexus is a vein	1111	06-jul-2018	99.7
chianti_classico_cacchiano is a wine	1111	06-jul-2018	98.5
defiance_kia is a company	1111	06-jul-2018	95.4
thomas_hernandez is a scientist	1111	06-jul-2018	100.0
talgo is a transportation system located in the city vancouver	1116	12-sep-2018	100.0
orb_weaver is called spider	1116	12-sep-2018	100.0
hanoi is the location of the event chinese_worker_killed_in_anti_beijing_protest_in_vietnam	1116	12-sep-2018	100.0
steve001 is an athlete who injured his/her arms	1115	03-sep-2018	99.2
pests is a type of spiders	1111	06-jul-2018	99.3