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
stanley_fletcher is a Canadian person	1111	06-jul-2018	91.5
the_mailbox_post is a political blog	1111	06-jul-2018	99.7
nice_breakfast is a type of meat	1111	06-jul-2018	100.0
south_america is a continent	1111	06-jul-2018	100.0
malignant_lung_cancer is a disease	1111	06-jul-2018	100.0
boston_logan is a building located in the city boston	1116	12-sep-2018	99.8
neurontin is a drug worked on by pfizer	1114	25-aug-2018	100.0
holly_madison is a person who has residence in the city los_angeles_ca	1112	24-jul-2018	100.0
holiday_inn_express is a hotel in the city toronto	1116	12-sep-2018	99.9
n122 is the number of people injured in the event n1999_bourbonnais__illinois__train_accident	1116	12-sep-2018	100.0