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
aiseesoft_iphone_4s_to_mac_transfer is a video game system	1111	06-jul-2018	96.1
oblique_externus_abdominis is a muscle	1112	24-jul-2018	99.3
small_tornado is a weather phenomenon	1111	06-jul-2018	99.5
folliculitis_barbae is a physiological condition	1111	06-jul-2018	96.2
technical_schools_farm is a farm	1111	06-jul-2018	99.9
jason_isringhausen is an athlete that flied out to position center	1111	06-jul-2018	100.0
the home stadium of rich_harden is wrigley_field	1116	12-sep-2018	100.0
la_habana is the capital city of the country cuba	1116	12-sep-2018	99.9
president_jimmy_carter is a U.S. politician who holds the office of us_secretary	1115	03-sep-2018	100.0
olaf_scholz is the leader of the city hamburg	1116	12-sep-2018	100.0