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
rights_last_year is a socio-political term	1111	06-jul-2018	94.7
northwest_community_college_hazelton_campus is a train station	1111	06-jul-2018	99.5
leslie_newman is an Australian person	1111	06-jul-2018	100.0
subtendinous_prepatellar_bursa is a vein	1111	06-jul-2018	97.5
chestnut_capped_warbler is a bird	1111	06-jul-2018	100.0
royal_albert_hall is a stadium or event venue located in the city central_london	1116	12-sep-2018	93.8
weapons is a type of weapon produced in russia	1113	15-aug-2018	93.1
koat_tv is a TV affiliate of the network abc_news	1116	12-sep-2018	100.0
china is a country also known as belgium	1111	06-jul-2018	93.8
the coach shaun_alexander won the trophy or tournament super_bowl_xlii	1113	15-aug-2018	100.0