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
principal_law_clerk is a job position	1111	06-jul-2018	98.7
information_staff is a scientific term	1111	06-jul-2018	100.0
n2_ethoxyethanol is a chemical	1111	06-jul-2018	100.0
woodiness is a physical characteristic	1111	06-jul-2018	100.0
teachers_credit_union is a bank	1111	06-jul-2018	100.0
herbs is an agricultural product produced in __america	1116	12-sep-2018	100.0
tv looks like tub	1111	06-jul-2018	93.8
jacob is the father of rebekah	1116	12-sep-2018	98.8
missouri_state_university is a sports team also known as state_university	1111	06-jul-2018	98.4
ny is a sate or province located in the country u_s_	1116	12-sep-2018	100.0