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
anchorage is a city	1111	06-jul-2018	99.7
french_writer_michel_houellebecq is a writer	1111	06-jul-2018	91.5
n6_38_pm is a time	1111	06-jul-2018	100.0
network_interface_cards is a consumer electronic device	1111	06-jul-2018	92.5
defenders_magazine is a magazine	1111	06-jul-2018	99.9
european_countries is a generalization of britain	1116	12-sep-2018	100.0
martina_navratilova is an athlete who beat williams	1114	25-aug-2018	96.9
birch is a plant that is a kind of burls	1111	06-jul-2018	100.0
national is a bank in nepal	1114	25-aug-2018	100.0
blue_jays is headquartered in the state or province new_york	1116	12-sep-2018	100.0