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
digital_camera_magazines is a kind of media	1111	06-jul-2018	99.2
options_menu is a criminal	1111	06-jul-2018	100.0
blackberry_leaves is a vegetable	1111	06-jul-2018	91.5
neuroectomy_nodulectomy is a medical procedure	1111	06-jul-2018	100.0
middlefield_road is a street	1111	06-jul-2018	100.0
sounder is a transportation system located in the city seattle	1116	12-sep-2018	100.0
paramount is a building located in the city denver	1116	12-sep-2018	100.0
calhoun is a person who belongs to the organization hall_of_fame	1111	06-jul-2018	93.8
four is the number of people injured in the event dubai_bus_crash_kills_15_asian_workers	1116	12-sep-2018	100.0
washington_d_c_ is a city that lies on the river grand	1113	15-aug-2018	100.0