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
vinita_oklahoma is an island	1111	06-jul-2018	96.5
n12344 is a ZIP code	1112	24-jul-2018	99.8
therapeutic_pain is a physiological condition	1111	06-jul-2018	93.9
battle_of_verchen is a military conflict	1111	06-jul-2018	100.0
youtube is an organization	1111	06-jul-2018	100.0
victoria is the capital city of the state or province bc	1116	12-sep-2018	100.0
bed is often found in private_living_room	1111	06-jul-2018	96.9
argentina is a country located in the geopolitical location foreign_countries	1112	24-jul-2018	93.8
qwest is the home venue for the sports team seattle_seahawks_21_10	1116	12-sep-2018	100.0
football is a sport taught in the country _uk	1116	12-sep-2018	100.0