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
collared_palm_thrush is a bird	1112	24-jul-2018	100.0
star_plaza_hotel is a skyscraper	1111	06-jul-2018	99.9
the_first_church_of_the_spirit_and_truth is a religion	1111	06-jul-2018	100.0
voter_rights is a socio-political term	1111	06-jul-2018	94.7
santa_clara_magazine is a publication	1111	06-jul-2018	95.9
cape_town is the capital city of the country south_africa	1116	12-sep-2018	100.0
ob_gyn is an academic program at the university college	1112	24-jul-2018	93.8
yoko_ono has husband john_lennon	1116	12-sep-2018	100.0
federal_aviation_administration is headquartered in the country us	1116	12-sep-2018	100.0
pests is called ticks	1116	12-sep-2018	96.9