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
special_assistant_us_attorney is a kind of office held by a politician	1111	06-jul-2018	100.0
valu_plus_food_warehouse is a retail store	1111	06-jul-2018	99.5
scion_xb_engines is a kind of automobile engine	1111	06-jul-2018	100.0
oliguric_phase is a non-disease physiological condition	1111	06-jul-2018	97.5
mullein_leaves is a vegetable	1111	06-jul-2018	93.9
wtop is a radio station in the city washington_d_c_	1116	12-sep-2018	99.6
anderson has spouse bishop	1116	12-sep-2018	93.8
baltimore_orioles is a sports team that plays the sport baseball	1116	12-sep-2018	100.0
san_jose is the home city of the sports team san_jose_state	1116	12-sep-2018	100.0
ups_express is headquartered in the city atlanta	1116	12-sep-2018	100.0