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
industrial_electronics is an academic field	1111	06-jul-2018	91.0
manuel_de_la_revilla is a South American person	1111	06-jul-2018	97.5
enzyme_tryptophan_hydroxylase is a protein	1111	06-jul-2018	94.7
canadian_bacon is a type of meat	1111	06-jul-2018	99.5
signet_cells is a type of biological cell	1111	06-jul-2018	94.0
washington_d_c_ is a city also known as saint_louis	1113	15-aug-2018	100.0
the home stadium of ben_eager is wrigley_field	1116	12-sep-2018	100.0
nissan is a specific automobile maker dealer in texas	1114	25-aug-2018	100.0
gas_prices is a generalization of nuclear_missile	1111	06-jul-2018	100.0
topeka is a city located in the geopolitical location kansas	1111	06-jul-2018	93.8