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
schlegel_s_beaked_blind_snake is a reptile	1111	06-jul-2018	100.0
pierce_lake is a trail	1111	06-jul-2018	100.0
james_allen_brandt is a criminal	1111	06-jul-2018	100.0
juan_manuel_de_rosas is a South American person	1111	06-jul-2018	98.0
nassau_county_assistant_district_attorney is a kind of office held by a politician	1111	06-jul-2018	100.0
hard is a generalization of rock	1112	24-jul-2018	93.8
arthur_miller wrote the book crucible	1113	15-aug-2018	100.0
arts is an academic program at the university baptist_university	1113	15-aug-2018	93.8
the country panama uses the currency dollar	1116	12-sep-2018	99.8
boston is the home city of the sports team boston_celtics	1116	12-sep-2018	100.0