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
potomac_street is a street	1111	06-jul-2018	100.0
apple_creek_ohio is an island	1111	06-jul-2018	96.3
tallahassee_airport is a transportation port	1112	24-jul-2018	100.0
devry_institute_of_technology_decatur is a train station	1111	06-jul-2018	99.3
rotavirus_infections is a virus	1111	06-jul-2018	100.0
spiders is called brazilian_whiteknee_tarantula	1111	06-jul-2018	100.0
oil is a generalization of black_pepper	1114	25-aug-2018	100.0
theodore_roosevelt is a politician who holds the office of president	1115	03-sep-2018	100.0
mount_whitney is a mountain in the state or province california	1116	12-sep-2018	100.0
red_wings participated in the event finals	1113	15-aug-2018	98.4