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
solidbody is a musical instrument	1111	06-jul-2018	96.0
the_nashville_ledger is a political blog	1111	06-jul-2018	98.9
prescription_antidepressant is a muscle	1111	06-jul-2018	99.5
zoo_schmiding is a zoo	1111	06-jul-2018	100.0
demolition_hand_tools is a tool	1112	24-jul-2018	99.3
providence is the home city of the sports team brown_university	1116	12-sep-2018	99.8
john_kerry was born in the state or province colorado	1116	12-sep-2018	100.0
london_gatwick is a generalization of temple_of_the_reclining_buddha	1114	25-aug-2018	100.0
howie_long is related to howie_long	1116	12-sep-2018	100.0
joseph_conrad wrote the book the_heart_of_darkness	1111	06-jul-2018	96.9