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
dollar_to_dem is a currency	1111	06-jul-2018	93.8
burkhardt_wisconsin is a beach	1111	06-jul-2018	90.7
allyn_washington is an island	1111	06-jul-2018	95.7
home_automation_magazine is a magazine	1111	06-jul-2018	99.8
battle_of_kissou_ is a military conflict	1111	06-jul-2018	100.0
new_orleans is a city located in the country usa	1116	12-sep-2018	96.9
eggs is an agricultural product coming from reptiles	1112	24-jul-2018	97.1
olympia is the capital city of the state or province washington	1116	12-sep-2018	100.0
jeep is a specific automobile maker dealer in lancaster	1114	25-aug-2018	100.0
ben_roethlisberger is a person who belongs to the organization steelers	1111	06-jul-2018	99.8