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
algerian_saharan_arabic is a language	1111	06-jul-2018	98.7
chivas is an organization	1113	15-aug-2018	96.8
four_major_islands can be a part of a landscape	1111	06-jul-2018	99.3
n7ta_number_977 is a performance metric used by machine-learning scientists	1111	06-jul-2018	99.9
haloferax_sp__fib210_2 is an archaeon	1111	06-jul-2018	100.0
the sports team new_york_mets was the winner of nlcs	1116	12-sep-2018	100.0
seattle is a city located in the state or province washington	1116	12-sep-2018	100.0
louse is called phylloxera	1115	03-sep-2018	100.0
lexus is a specific automobile maker dealer in new_jersey	1114	25-aug-2018	100.0
budapest is the capital city of the country hungary	1116	12-sep-2018	96.9