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
pieter_coecke_van_aelst is a visual artist	1111	06-jul-2018	100.0
mount_merbabu is a mountain range	1111	06-jul-2018	99.9
king_s_college is a school	1116	12-sep-2018	98.4
market_strategist is a profession	1111	06-jul-2018	95.8
section_7_2 is a legislative bill	1111	06-jul-2018	100.0
regional_rail is a transportation system located in the city philadelphia	1116	12-sep-2018	100.0
kzok_fm is a radio station in the city seattle	1116	12-sep-2018	99.9
ellen_trout_zoo is an aquarium in the city lufkin	1116	12-sep-2018	100.0
paul001 contributed to the creative work feast	1114	25-aug-2018	100.0
cairo is the capital city of the country egypt	1116	12-sep-2018	100.0