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
galion_ohio is an island	1111	06-jul-2018	95.8
clarence_w__nelson is an astronaut	1111	06-jul-2018	100.0
oldsmobile_442_hurst_special is a kind of vehicle	1111	06-jul-2018	99.9
one_scandinavian_language is a language	1111	06-jul-2018	99.6
una_organizzazione is a wine	1111	06-jul-2018	99.2
shells is a type of weapon produced in israel	1114	25-aug-2018	100.0
emerald_lake is a lake in the state or province british_columbia	1116	12-sep-2018	100.0
steve001 works for world	1112	24-jul-2018	100.0
states is a state or province located in the geopolitical location palestine	1114	25-aug-2018	100.0
bush is a person who was written about in denver_post	1116	12-sep-2018	100.0