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
the_iliad_and_the_odyssey is a book	1111	06-jul-2018	100.0
line_child_health_insurance is an economic sector	1111	06-jul-2018	99.9
candy_fruit_imperials is a kind of candy	1111	06-jul-2018	98.2
genevia_arkansas is a beach	1111	06-jul-2018	91.7
otherness is a physical characteristic	1112	24-jul-2018	100.0
abu_musab_al_zarqawi was born in the country jordan	1116	12-sep-2018	100.0
steve001 is a person who belongs to the organization state_university	1112	24-jul-2018	100.0
name is a drug having the side effect side_effects	1111	06-jul-2018	100.0
southwest is a company that has an office in the city los_angeles_ca	1111	06-jul-2018	100.0
kqed is a radio station in the city san_francisco	1116	12-sep-2018	98.4