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
brilliant_round is a geometric shape	1111	06-jul-2018	92.5
rivoli_restaurant is a restaurant	1111	06-jul-2018	100.0
reply_commenting is software used by machine-learning scientists	1111	06-jul-2018	99.5
intermediate_orbitofrontal_sulcus is a kind of brain tissue	1111	06-jul-2018	97.9
arteria_supraobitalis is an artery	1111	06-jul-2018	99.4
national is a company that has an office in the country jordan	1114	25-aug-2018	100.0
sd is a sate or province located in the country usa	1116	12-sep-2018	100.0
sky_harbor_international is a building located in the city downtown_phoenix	1116	12-sep-2018	100.0
houghton is a city located in the state or province michigan	1116	12-sep-2018	96.6
creative_coalition is headquartered in the state or province new_york	1116	12-sep-2018	100.0