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
menstrual_cycles is a non-disease physiological condition	1111	06-jul-2018	96.1
desk_coordinator is an item found on the floor	1111	06-jul-2018	99.9
hambly_arena is a stadium or event venue	1111	06-jul-2018	100.0
west_mineral_kansas is an island	1111	06-jul-2018	96.8
anthracite_capital_inc is a biotech company	1111	06-jul-2018	100.0
easyjet is a company that has an office in the city basel	1112	24-jul-2018	93.8
tarantulas is called spiders	1111	06-jul-2018	100.0
antioch is a city located in the country syria	1116	12-sep-2018	93.8
spiders is an animal that is a kind of bugs	1111	06-jul-2018	100.0
mt is a sate or province located in the country usa	1116	12-sep-2018	100.0