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
warming_scenario is a physical action	1112	24-jul-2018	91.3
battle_of_soncino is a military conflict	1111	06-jul-2018	100.0
venous_foramen is a vein	1111	06-jul-2018	99.0
eternalism is a visual art movement	1116	12-sep-2018	95.8
bright_white is a color	1111	06-jul-2018	100.0
pleasant_hill_road is a street in the city duluth	1116	12-sep-2018	100.0
ohio is a city that lies on the river great_miami	1112	24-jul-2018	100.0
spanish is a language taught in language schools in the city las_palmas_de_gran_canaria	1113	15-aug-2018	100.0
hockey is a sport played in the venue td_banknorth_garden	1112	24-jul-2018	100.0
american_museum is a museum in the city new_york	1116	12-sep-2018	100.0