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
effective_90_days is an event	1112	24-jul-2018	90.5
car_exporters is a kind of vehicle	1111	06-jul-2018	99.3
radio_frequency_waves is a weather phenomenon	1111	06-jul-2018	99.4
beijing_jishuitan_hospital is a hospital	1111	06-jul-2018	92.5
maia_morgenstern is a Canadian person	1111	06-jul-2018	98.1
bed is often found in bathroom_unit	1111	06-jul-2018	93.8
dragonflies is an arthropod that looks like damselflies	1111	06-jul-2018	100.0
the country southwest_africa uses the currency rand	1116	12-sep-2018	100.0
president_obama is a U.S. politician who is a member of the political group house	1112	24-jul-2018	100.0
halifax_international is an airport in the city halifax	1116	12-sep-2018	99.2