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
athens_boonesboro_road is a highway	1111	06-jul-2018	93.8
line_lowcost_health_insurance is an economic sector	1111	06-jul-2018	99.9
i_home_clock is an item found on a wall	1111	06-jul-2018	99.4
n2006_national_league_division_series is a sports game	1111	06-jul-2018	99.9
ventral_cochlear_nuclei is a kind of brain tissue	1111	06-jul-2018	99.4
anne_perry wrote the book defend_and_betray	1111	06-jul-2018	100.0
indianapolis is the home city of the sports team super_bowl_xliv_the_indianapolis_colts	1116	12-sep-2018	100.0
republican is a person who has residence in the geopolitical location georgia	1114	25-aug-2018	100.0
livan_hernandez is an athlete that flied out to position center	1111	06-jul-2018	100.0
the coach j_j__hardy won the trophy or tournament world_series	1115	03-sep-2018	100.0