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
sierra_valley_district_hospital is a hospital	1111	06-jul-2018	100.0
bunker_cave is a cave	1111	06-jul-2018	100.0
norcross is a city	1111	06-jul-2018	99.8
ken_joslin is american	1111	06-jul-2018	91.6
raw_walnuts is a fruit	1112	24-jul-2018	99.7
nc_state is a sports team that plays the sport football	1116	12-sep-2018	96.8
robin died in the location new_south_wales	1116	12-sep-2018	100.0
james has brother john	1116	12-sep-2018	100.0
kansas_city_chiefs is headquartered in the state or province new_york	1116	12-sep-2018	100.0
lou_piniella is an athlete who led chicago_cubs	1116	12-sep-2018	100.0