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
dengue_fever_viruses is a virus	1111	06-jul-2018	97.7
rec_room_door is an item often found in a hallway	1111	06-jul-2018	99.7
mchenry_illinois is a geopolitical entity that is a location	1111	06-jul-2018	100.0
class_ideas is a conference	1111	06-jul-2018	99.5
commensal_spider is an arachnid	1112	24-jul-2018	100.0
air_france has acquired netherlands	1111	06-jul-2018	100.0
edwards is a male person who moved to the state (or province) washington	1113	15-aug-2018	100.0
patricia_verdier got married in n1982	1116	12-sep-2018	100.0
billy held the position of general_manager	1115	03-sep-2018	100.0
ukraine is a country also known as china	1111	06-jul-2018	93.8