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
azalea_sawfly is an insect	1111	06-jul-2018	100.0
joey_votto is a Mexican person	1111	06-jul-2018	100.0
world_famous_tower is a skyscraper	1111	06-jul-2018	99.9
paul_hindemith is a European person	1111	06-jul-2018	100.0
miravalles_volcano is a mountain range	1111	06-jul-2018	99.9
guillermo_mota is an athlete that flied out to position center	1111	06-jul-2018	100.0
american_museum is a museum in the city new_york	1116	12-sep-2018	100.0
nyc is a city located in the geopolitical location national	1114	25-aug-2018	99.6
james_monroe represents the region states	1115	03-sep-2018	99.9
gainesville is a subpart of georgia	1111	06-jul-2018	100.0