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
greenwich_unison is a trade union	1111	06-jul-2018	93.5
steve_hackney is an astronaut	1111	06-jul-2018	99.9
schuyler_county_maps is a county	1111	06-jul-2018	93.1
squirrel_nests is a vertebrate	1112	24-jul-2018	93.3
plant_seedlings is a plant	1111	06-jul-2018	100.0
spiders is called recluse	1111	06-jul-2018	100.0
tallahassee is the capital city of the state or province florida	1116	12-sep-2018	100.0
greek is a language taught in language schools in the city jerusalem	1112	24-jul-2018	100.0
citibank is a bank in hong_kong	1114	25-aug-2018	100.0
the coach torry_holt won the trophy or tournament super_bowl_xlii	1111	06-jul-2018	100.0