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
fantastic_picture is form of visual art	1111	06-jul-2018	98.1
bp_america is a pertroleum company	1114	25-aug-2018	100.0
highland_community_college_illinois is a train station	1111	06-jul-2018	99.4
wang_yuan_long is an Asian person	1111	06-jul-2018	99.9
femoral_trochlea is a bone	1111	06-jul-2018	91.6
randall_forsberg is a person born on the date n1943	1116	12-sep-2018	100.0
ottawa_senators is headquartered in the state or province new_york	1116	12-sep-2018	100.0
wahu_ca is a TV affiliate of the network fox	1116	12-sep-2018	100.0
the country croatia uses the currency kuna	1116	12-sep-2018	100.0
national is a bank that bought barclays	1114	25-aug-2018	100.0