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
beadiness is a physical characteristic	1112	24-jul-2018	100.0
ground_grass is a plant	1111	06-jul-2018	100.0
technical_requirements is a political issue	1111	06-jul-2018	100.0
cox_newspapers is a blog	1111	06-jul-2018	97.2
vandys_pond is a lake	1111	06-jul-2018	100.0
wall_street_journal_interactive_edition is a company headquartered in the city nueva_york	1116	12-sep-2018	100.0
metro_system is a transportation system located in the city montreal	1116	12-sep-2018	100.0
zenger_farm is a farm in the state or province oregon	1116	12-sep-2018	100.0
phnom_penh is a city that lies on the river mekong_river	1112	24-jul-2018	93.8
seville was born in pensacola	1116	12-sep-2018	94.9