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
union_college_barbourville is a train station	1111	06-jul-2018	99.5
alexander_khavanov is a male	1111	06-jul-2018	100.0
temazepam_capsule is a drug	1111	06-jul-2018	100.0
prototype_software is a tool	1111	06-jul-2018	99.8
royal_melbourne_zoological_gardens is a zoo	1111	06-jul-2018	99.8
nick_swisher plays for the team yankees	1116	12-sep-2018	100.0
n71 is the number of people killed in the event nigerian_bus_station_bombing_kills_71_on_edge_of_capital	1116	12-sep-2018	100.0
spanish_language is a language taught in language schools in the city san_miguel	1112	24-jul-2018	100.0
baseball is a sport played in the venue louisiana_superdome	1116	12-sep-2018	100.0
michael is a person who has attended the school state	1113	15-aug-2018	100.0