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
famous_beer is a beverage	1111	06-jul-2018	95.5
tupelo_buffalo_park_and_zoo is an aquarium	1111	06-jul-2018	100.0
social_report is a physical characteristic	1111	06-jul-2018	100.0
pregnancy_twins is a non-disease physiological condition	1111	06-jul-2018	99.7
palni_hills is a mountain range	1111	06-jul-2018	99.8
french is a language used in the university ohio_state_university	1116	12-sep-2018	99.2
daily_news is a company that has an office in the city san_francisco	1112	24-jul-2018	96.9
washington is a state that is bordered by the state british_columbia	1113	15-aug-2018	98.4
vre is a bacteria that causes infection	1115	03-sep-2018	96.9
national_oceanographic_and_atmospheric_administration is headquartered in the country us	1116	12-sep-2018	100.0