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
bayesian_networks is a machine-learning algorithm	1111	06-jul-2018	98.9
floor_standing_shower_tap is an item often found in a bathroom	1111	06-jul-2018	99.7
mayflower_street is a street	1111	06-jul-2018	100.0
tmdl_study is a research project	1111	06-jul-2018	97.7
woc is a radio station	1111	06-jul-2018	96.9
walter_payton plays the athletic team position running_back	1113	15-aug-2018	100.0
brasilia is the capital city of the country brazil	1116	12-sep-2018	95.2
yeager_airport is an airport in the city charleston	1116	12-sep-2018	100.0
larger_animals is an animal that is a kind of monkeys	1112	24-jul-2018	100.0
seattle_seahawks_21_10 is a sports team that won the super_bowl_xlii	1113	15-aug-2018	100.0