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
french_and_or_dutch is an ethnic group	1111	06-jul-2018	95.8
center_sensors is a sports team position	1111	06-jul-2018	98.7
gregory_simon is an Australian person	1111	06-jul-2018	100.0
malabon_zoo_und_aquarium is a zoo	1111	06-jul-2018	99.7
keeled_ratsnake is a reptile	1111	06-jul-2018	100.0
north_dakota is a state that is bordered by the state michigan	1113	15-aug-2018	93.8
the country trinidad_and_tobago uses the currency dollars	1116	12-sep-2018	100.0
him is a musician in the genre finnish_rock	1113	15-aug-2018	100.0
david001 is a journalist that writes for the publication nyt_	1112	24-jul-2018	99.2
easyjet is a company that has an office in the city liverpool	1112	24-jul-2018	100.0