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
vino_novello is a wine	1111	06-jul-2018	92.2
phoenix_airport is a transportation port	1111	06-jul-2018	100.0
marburgvirus is a virus	1111	06-jul-2018	97.5
ektelon_racquetball_rackets is sports equipment	1111	06-jul-2018	93.0
craig_bryant is a professor	1111	06-jul-2018	91.0
spain is a country located in the geopolitical location foreign_countries	1112	24-jul-2018	100.0
heidelberg is a city that lies on the river yarra	1112	24-jul-2018	100.0
anne_perry wrote the book defend_and_betray	1111	06-jul-2018	100.0
tim_russert is a person who died at the age of 58	1116	12-sep-2018	100.0
edges has shape angle	1112	24-jul-2018	93.8