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
hormone_binding is a physical action	1111	06-jul-2018	97.1
democrat_and_chronicle is a political blog	1111	06-jul-2018	99.7
capestang is a city	1111	06-jul-2018	99.7
underage_drinking_offense ia a crime or charge	1111	06-jul-2018	100.0
seventh_judicial_district_court is a part of the government	1111	06-jul-2018	100.0
japanese is a language taught in language schools in the city tokyo	1113	15-aug-2018	100.0
states is a state or province located in the geopolitical location several_european_countries	1112	24-jul-2018	100.0
the country us_ uses the currency dollars	1116	12-sep-2018	100.0
easyjet is a company that has an office in the city basel	1112	24-jul-2018	93.8
magic is a sports team that plays against cavaliers	1111	06-jul-2018	100.0