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
mr_justice_underhill is a judge	1111	06-jul-2018	97.3
section_6 is a legislative bill	1111	06-jul-2018	100.0
a_a is a bacterium	1111	06-jul-2018	91.1
california_county is an airport	1111	06-jul-2018	100.0
temperature_information is a scientific term	1111	06-jul-2018	90.7
the home stadium of steve_montador is wrigley_field	1116	12-sep-2018	100.0
ectoparasites is an animal that preys on lice	1111	06-jul-2018	100.0
the companies herald and new_york compete with eachother	1111	06-jul-2018	100.0
west_virginia hired huggins	1111	06-jul-2018	100.0
murat_kurnaz belongs to the religion muslim	1116	12-sep-2018	100.0