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
house_democratic_whip is a job position	1111	06-jul-2018	97.6
tour_of_kansas_city is a sports race	1111	06-jul-2018	100.0
new_hanover_memorial_hospital is a hospital	1111	06-jul-2018	91.0
folliculitis_barbae is a physiological condition	1111	06-jul-2018	96.2
william_yardley is a Canadian person	1111	06-jul-2018	100.0
snails is a type of organisms	1113	15-aug-2018	99.6
missile is a type of weapon produced in central001	1113	15-aug-2018	99.2
east_village is a park in the city nueva_york	1116	12-sep-2018	96.9
china is a country located in the geopolitical location developed_countries	1111	06-jul-2018	93.8
arthur and lucius are siblings	1112	24-jul-2018	93.8