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
grammatical_requirements is a political issue	1111	06-jul-2018	99.9
overbookishness is an emotion	1111	06-jul-2018	95.3
two_spy is a parlour game	1111	06-jul-2018	91.0
tour_de_baviere is a sporting event	1111	06-jul-2018	100.0
naked_in_death is a book	1111	06-jul-2018	100.0
trenton is the capital city of the state or province new_jersey	1116	12-sep-2018	100.0
aorta arises from ventricle	1116	12-sep-2018	100.0
steve001 is a person who belongs to the organization history	1112	24-jul-2018	96.9
joseph represents the region church	1115	03-sep-2018	100.0
grand_lake is a lake in the state or province oklahoma	1116	12-sep-2018	99.6