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
jaguar_2_4_engines is a kind of automobile engine	1111	06-jul-2018	100.0
melody_robinson is a professor	1111	06-jul-2018	91.3
n155_mm_shells is a weapon	1111	06-jul-2018	96.8
darien_province is a state or a province	1111	06-jul-2018	98.7
kitakyushu_city is a city	1111	06-jul-2018	100.0
boris_yeltsin represents the region russia_federation	1113	15-aug-2018	99.8
brewers is a sports team that plays the sport baseball	1116	12-sep-2018	100.0
via_christi is a hospital in the city wichita	1116	12-sep-2018	93.8
the country european_countries uses the currency dollars	1116	12-sep-2018	100.0
edward_johnson is a politician who holds the office of senator	1114	25-aug-2018	93.8