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
commercial_agriculture is an economic sector	1111	06-jul-2018	100.0
accessory_magnocellular_nuclei is a kind of brain tissue	1111	06-jul-2018	98.2
a_spider_crab is a crustacean	1111	06-jul-2018	99.5
grand_pacific_palisades_hotel is a tourist attraction	1111	06-jul-2018	94.5
igor_jijikine is a Canadian person	1111	06-jul-2018	92.4
springfield is the capital city of the state or province illinois	1116	12-sep-2018	100.0
the country japan uses the currency yen	1116	12-sep-2018	100.0
dioxide is a chemical that is a kind of companies	1111	06-jul-2018	93.8
anne_perry wrote the book defend_and_betray	1111	06-jul-2018	100.0
alex_wilson plays in the league nfl	1116	12-sep-2018	100.0