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
tkdd is a machine-learning conference	1112	24-jul-2018	92.7
five_islands can be a part of a landscape	1111	06-jul-2018	99.3
n12_22_16 is a term used by physicists	1111	06-jul-2018	92.6
illustrators_magazine is a magazine	1111	06-jul-2018	99.9
internal_iliac_venous_system is a vein	1111	06-jul-2018	95.0
shanghai is a city located in the geopolitical location china	1111	06-jul-2018	100.0
hong_kong_disneyland is a company that has an office in the country china	1111	06-jul-2018	100.0
european_countries is a generalization of sweden	1116	12-sep-2018	100.0
finland is a city located in the country norway	1116	12-sep-2018	93.8
newark_liberty_international is a generalization of temple_of_the_reclining_buddha	1114	25-aug-2018	100.0