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
juliette_goglia is a commedian	1111	06-jul-2018	99.9
dryland_corn is a grain	1112	24-jul-2018	95.9
personal_computing is an item found on a table	1111	06-jul-2018	100.0
brookhaven_lake is a lake	1111	06-jul-2018	100.0
environmental_victory is an event outcome	1111	06-jul-2018	91.8
bucharest is the capital city of the country romania	1116	12-sep-2018	100.0
bc_children_s_hospital is a hospital in the city vancouver	1116	12-sep-2018	100.0
david and carl are siblings	1114	25-aug-2018	93.8
greg_norman_and_ted_robinson is an athlete who wins australian_open	1114	25-aug-2018	100.0
channel_tunnel is a transportation system located in the city brussels	1116	12-sep-2018	100.0