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
american_business_womens_association is a professional organization	1111	06-jul-2018	100.0
phone_c is an item found on a table	1111	06-jul-2018	92.4
dutch_dialects is a language	1111	06-jul-2018	99.3
manuel_linares is a South American person	1111	06-jul-2018	98.3
sore_throat_and_lymph_nodes is a lymph node	1111	06-jul-2018	99.6
rick and paul001 are siblings	1114	25-aug-2018	93.8
santiago_de_compostela is a city located in the country spain	1116	12-sep-2018	100.0
white_waistcoat is a clothing item to go with tie	1111	06-jul-2018	93.8
max is a transportation system located in the city portland	1116	12-sep-2018	96.5
kennedy_space_center is headquartered in the state or province florida	1116	12-sep-2018	100.0