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
clear_waves is a weather phenomenon	1111	06-jul-2018	98.5
glencoe_street is a street	1111	06-jul-2018	100.0
wkbx is a radio station	1111	06-jul-2018	96.9
yellow_bibbed_fruit_dove is a vertebrate	1111	06-jul-2018	100.0
optic_neuropathy is a disease	1111	06-jul-2018	100.0
cantonese is the language of the country hong_kong	1114	25-aug-2018	100.0
zur_letzten_instanz_restaurant is a restaurant in the city berlin	1116	12-sep-2018	100.0
national_public_radio is a company headquartered in the city new_york	1116	12-sep-2018	100.0
ruzyne is an airport in the city prague	1116	12-sep-2018	100.0
lindsay_davenport is an athlete who beat venus_williams	1114	25-aug-2018	100.0