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
simpson_lake is a tourist attraction	1111	06-jul-2018	99.8
solartechnics_arena is a stadium or event venue	1111	06-jul-2018	100.0
boxwood_mite is an invertebrate	1111	06-jul-2018	100.0
oxford_brookes_university is a university	1111	06-jul-2018	100.0
leon_douglas is american	1111	06-jul-2018	91.4
european_countries is a generalization of netherlands	1116	12-sep-2018	100.0
new_england_aquarium is an aquarium in the city boston	1116	12-sep-2018	100.0
kisw is a radio station in the city seattle	1116	12-sep-2018	98.8
the sport baseball was played at n1915_world_series	1116	12-sep-2018	100.0
andrew has brother peter	1116	12-sep-2018	100.0