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
ceramic_bath_set is an item often found in a bathroom	1111	06-jul-2018	99.8
bath_south_carolina is an island	1111	06-jul-2018	95.8
building_hand_tools is a tool	1112	24-jul-2018	99.7
lumbricals_of_hand is a muscle	1111	06-jul-2018	99.8
kansas_city_kansas_street_blues_festival is a music festival	1111	06-jul-2018	100.0
barnstaple is a city that lies on the river taw	1112	24-jul-2018	93.8
jacksonville_jaguars is a sports team that played in games	1112	24-jul-2018	100.0
china is a country located in the geopolitical location sources	1111	06-jul-2018	100.0
states is a state or province located in the geopolitical location lima	1114	25-aug-2018	99.8
arkansas_state_university is an organization known by the acronym arkansas_state_university	1116	12-sep-2018	100.0