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
posterior_ethmoidal is a nerve	1111	06-jul-2018	98.3
forward_thinking is a cognitive action	1111	06-jul-2018	100.0
strawberrys is a visualizable thing	1111	06-jul-2018	95.5
xaghra is a city	1111	06-jul-2018	99.8
nellcor_puritan_bennett_inc is a biotech company	1111	06-jul-2018	100.0
bears is an animal that preys on larger_animals	1112	24-jul-2018	100.0
soccer is a sport with fans in the country china	1111	06-jul-2018	100.0
justine_henin_hardenne is an athlete who beat kim_clijsters	1114	25-aug-2018	100.0
washington_dulles is an airport in the city washington_d_c_	1116	12-sep-2018	100.0
belfast_city_airport is a generalization of temple_of_the_reclining_buddha	1113	15-aug-2018	100.0