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
jungle_mountains can be a part of a landscape	1111	06-jul-2018	98.8
david_l__yulee is a European person	1111	06-jul-2018	100.0
odontodactylidae is a mollusk	1111	06-jul-2018	100.0
siglufjordhur is a state or a province	1111	06-jul-2018	96.9
pediatric_clinical_study is a research project	1111	06-jul-2018	98.1
adventures is a generalization of snorkeling	1111	06-jul-2018	100.0
burien is a city located in the state or province washington	1116	12-sep-2018	98.4
orlando_cabrera and varitek are teammates	1112	24-jul-2018	93.8
charlie_sheen has brother emilio_estevez	1116	12-sep-2018	100.0
royal_victoria is a hospital in the city montreal	1116	12-sep-2018	99.8