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
narrowstripe_cardinalfish is a fish	1111	06-jul-2018	100.0
principal_manager is a job position	1111	06-jul-2018	98.8
arteria_parietales_posterior is an artery	1111	06-jul-2018	99.5
james_sims is an athlete	1111	06-jul-2018	91.9
eddie_garcia is a person	1111	06-jul-2018	95.7
pulmonary_arteries arises from ventricle	1116	12-sep-2018	100.0
new_england_patriots is a sports team that plays the sport football	1116	12-sep-2018	100.0
richard_nolte died in the state or province nh	1116	12-sep-2018	100.0
suburban_rail is a transportation system located in the city central_london	1116	12-sep-2018	100.0
larger_animals is an animal that preys on monkeys	1112	24-jul-2018	100.0