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
rome_mississippi is an island	1111	06-jul-2018	96.2
robert_collard is a North American person	1111	06-jul-2018	91.3
cigar_rights is a socio-political term	1111	06-jul-2018	95.7
toby_keith is a musician	1111	06-jul-2018	99.7
n6_40_00 is a term used by physicists	1111	06-jul-2018	96.9
arthropods is a type of spiders	1111	06-jul-2018	97.7
science concerns management	1114	25-aug-2018	99.7
ospel is a person born on the date n1950	1116	12-sep-2018	100.0
new_orleans_arena is the home venue for the sports team new_orleans_hornets	1116	12-sep-2018	100.0
bridgepoint_health is a hospital in the city toronto	1116	12-sep-2018	100.0