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
battle_axe is a weapon	1111	06-jul-2018	96.5
wigan_today is a newspaper	1111	06-jul-2018	92.8
plug_doors is an item often found in a hallway	1111	06-jul-2018	100.0
church_of_god_of_the_seventh_day is a religion	1111	06-jul-2018	100.0
philadelphia_veterans_administration_medical_center is a hospital	1111	06-jul-2018	90.0
bed is often found in foot_unit	1111	06-jul-2018	93.8
atlanta_braves was the looser of n1999_world_series	1116	12-sep-2018	100.0
english is the language of the country south_africa	1116	12-sep-2018	100.0
national is a bank in bulgaria	1114	25-aug-2018	100.0
judo is a sport taught in the country u_s_	1116	12-sep-2018	100.0