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
canadian_rocky_mountain is a mountain range	1111	06-jul-2018	99.7
nadi_area is a geopolitical entity that is a location	1111	06-jul-2018	92.1
line_interim_health_insurance is an economic sector	1111	06-jul-2018	99.6
n2008_09_17 is a date	1111	06-jul-2018	100.0
n12_09_55 is a term used by physicists	1111	06-jul-2018	93.1
beans is an agricultural product produced in __america	1116	12-sep-2018	100.0
anti_rifle is a generalization of nuclear_missile	1111	06-jul-2018	100.0
first_bank is a bank in nigeria	1114	25-aug-2018	100.0
george_carlin was born in the country us	1116	12-sep-2018	100.0
super_bowl_xliv_the_indianapolis_colts is a sports team that played in championship	1113	15-aug-2018	100.0