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
mike_dobesh is a professor	1111	06-jul-2018	91.0
hotel_il_nido is a hotel	1111	06-jul-2018	94.4
boonville is a city	1111	06-jul-2018	99.8
radios_ipod_alarm_clock is an item often found in a bedroom	1111	06-jul-2018	99.8
survey_work is a research project	1111	06-jul-2018	97.5
houston_rockets is a sports team that plays in the league nba	1116	12-sep-2018	100.0
city_hall is a stadium or event venue located in the city las_vegas	1116	12-sep-2018	93.8
stephen has citizenship in the country hungary	1112	24-jul-2018	100.0
spanish is a language used in the university rutgers_university	1116	12-sep-2018	93.8
ductus_arteriosus arises from aorta	1116	12-sep-2018	100.0