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
joel_torres is a North American person	1111	06-jul-2018	91.5
structure_of_vagus_nerve_visceral_branch is a nerve	1111	06-jul-2018	97.8
kixw is a radio station	1111	06-jul-2018	96.9
scytodidae is an insect	1111	06-jul-2018	100.0
technical_secretary is a profession	1111	06-jul-2018	100.0
business is an academic program at the university southern_university	1115	03-sep-2018	93.8
urdu is the language of the country india	1115	03-sep-2018	100.0
noah and the_ark are siblings	1113	15-aug-2018	93.8
air_madagascar is a company that has an office in the city paris	1111	06-jul-2018	93.8
john_kerry was born in the state or province colorado	1116	12-sep-2018	100.0