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
acid_and_or_sodium_hydroxide is a chemical	1111	06-jul-2018	100.0
red_earth_centipede_snake is a reptile	1111	06-jul-2018	100.0
n4__years is a musical album	1111	06-jul-2018	100.0
prague_municipal_court is a part of the government	1111	06-jul-2018	94.7
gasoline_mixtures is a refinery product	1113	15-aug-2018	92.6
president_jimmy_carter is a U.S. politician who holds the office of president	1115	03-sep-2018	93.8
ramush_haradinaj works for kosovo	1111	06-jul-2018	100.0
william_friedkin directed the movie exorcist	1112	24-jul-2018	93.8
lam is a city also known as los_angeles_ca	1111	06-jul-2018	100.0
hockey is a sport played in the venue st__pete_times_forum	1112	24-jul-2018	100.0