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
cabazitaxel is a drug	1111	06-jul-2018	90.2
fill_lighting is a perception event	1111	06-jul-2018	98.6
united_states_postal_service is a retail store	1111	06-jul-2018	100.0
ecuadorian_ground_dove is a bird	1112	24-jul-2018	100.0
moldavia is a country	1111	06-jul-2018	96.9
alexander has citizenship in the country scotland	1112	24-jul-2018	100.0
masi_oka is a person who has residence in the country us	1115	03-sep-2018	100.0
aksu is a city located in the geopolitical location china	1111	06-jul-2018	99.8
soya is an agricultural product produced in china	1111	06-jul-2018	93.8
strategic_arms is a type of weapon produced in russia	1113	15-aug-2018	99.8