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
soccer_soccer is a sport	1111	06-jul-2018	100.0
saint_louis_hospital is a hospital	1111	06-jul-2018	92.4
matsumoto_jun is a commedian	1111	06-jul-2018	90.3
enterocolostomy is a medical procedure	1111	06-jul-2018	100.0
car_prices_car is a product	1111	06-jul-2018	90.6
red_maples is a plant that is a kind of trees	1111	06-jul-2018	100.0
al has been charged with murder	1115	03-sep-2018	96.9
forestry is an academic program at the university college	1112	24-jul-2018	98.4
cecil_fielder is the father of prince_fielder	1115	03-sep-2018	100.0
dc is a city that lies on the river grand	1113	15-aug-2018	99.2