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
great_crested_newt is a vertebrate	1111	06-jul-2018	100.0
winnipeg_airport is a transportation port	1111	06-jul-2018	100.0
user_agreement_this_user_agreement is a TV show	1111	06-jul-2018	100.0
joshua_fields is an athlete	1111	06-jul-2018	94.5
hobart_airport is an airport	1112	24-jul-2018	100.0
anne_perry wrote the book weighed_in_the_balance	1111	06-jul-2018	100.0
villanova_university is a sports team that plays in the league international	1116	12-sep-2018	99.2
state_university is a sports team also known as missouri_state_university	1111	06-jul-2018	98.4
venice_marco_polo_airport is a generalization of temple_of_the_reclining_buddha	1115	03-sep-2018	100.0
cells is a subpart of the body within tumor	1111	06-jul-2018	99.6