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
small_sulawesi_cuscus is a vertebrate	1111	06-jul-2018	98.3
lemongrass_beef is a type of meat	1111	06-jul-2018	99.5
first_barley is a grain	1111	06-jul-2018	94.4
sickle_cell_disease_association is a professional organization	1111	06-jul-2018	91.6
sierra_safari_zoo is an aquarium	1111	06-jul-2018	100.0
president_reagan is a U.S. politician endorsed by the U.S. politician george_h_w__bush	1112	24-jul-2018	96.9
samsung is a company also known as motorola	1114	25-aug-2018	93.8
super_bowl_xliv_the_indianapolis_colts is a sports team that played in games	1113	15-aug-2018	100.0
the home stadium of cristobal_huet is wrigley_field	1116	12-sep-2018	100.0
european_nations is a generalization of france_france	1115	03-sep-2018	100.0