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
soccer_soccer is a sport	1111	06-jul-2018	100.0
illness_depression is a physiological condition	1111	06-jul-2018	100.0
resources_secretary is a kind of office held by a politician	1111	06-jul-2018	100.0
marginal_artery is an artery	1111	06-jul-2018	99.6
toy_rifles is a weapon	1111	06-jul-2018	98.4
kidney is a subpart of the body within tract001	1111	06-jul-2018	93.8
nordic_ski is a sport taught in the country __america	1116	12-sep-2018	100.0
carroll is a person who has attended the school college	1113	15-aug-2018	96.9
barack_obama is a politician who holds the office of senator	1113	15-aug-2018	99.8
charlotte is the capital city of the country us	1116	12-sep-2018	93.8