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
ljungby is a visualizable scene	1111	06-jul-2018	99.2
serum_antibodies is a protein	1111	06-jul-2018	100.0
islamic_guerrillas is a terrorist organization	1111	06-jul-2018	99.3
ringtone_mouse is an item found on a table	1111	06-jul-2018	99.7
sale_reserve is a sport	1111	06-jul-2018	100.0
london_heathrow_airport is an airport in the city central_london	1116	12-sep-2018	100.0
providence_health_system is a hospital in the city seattle	1116	12-sep-2018	100.0
larry_hughes is an athlete who led chicago_bulls	1116	12-sep-2018	96.9
venus_williams is an athlete who beat vera_zvonareva	1114	25-aug-2018	100.0
kxla is a TV station in the city los_angeles_ca	1116	12-sep-2018	100.0