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
steve_scott is american	1111	06-jul-2018	100.0
montserratians is an ethnic group	1111	06-jul-2018	92.1
giant_snow_storm is a weather phenomenon	1111	06-jul-2018	98.7
esc__san_isidro_nro__640 is a South American person	1111	06-jul-2018	91.4
next_menstrual_period is a non-disease physiological condition	1111	06-jul-2018	95.3
lansing is the capital city of the state or province michigan	1116	12-sep-2018	100.0
silk is an agricultural product produced in india	1115	03-sep-2018	100.0
silicon_graphics is a synonym for maya	1111	06-jul-2018	93.8
talgo is a transportation system located in the city vancouver	1116	12-sep-2018	100.0
bud_norris plays the sport baseball	1116	12-sep-2018	100.0