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
hudson_place is a location	1115	03-sep-2018	93.7
employment_this_page ia a celebrity	1111	06-jul-2018	90.8
preserved_lemons is a fruit	1111	06-jul-2018	99.5
late_onset_asthma is a physiological condition	1111	06-jul-2018	94.4
delaware_state_police_federal_credit_union is a credit union	1111	06-jul-2018	100.0
pests is called ticks	1116	12-sep-2018	96.9
kwtv_tv is headquartered in the city oklahoma_city	1116	12-sep-2018	100.0
greer is a city that lies on the river little_colorado	1111	06-jul-2018	93.8
silvio_berlusconi held the position of prime_minister	1111	06-jul-2018	100.0
chris_martin is a musician who plays the piano	1116	12-sep-2018	99.2