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
new_pond is a trail	1111	06-jul-2018	100.0
court_photographer is a job position	1111	06-jul-2018	94.8
camellia_sinensis is a fungus	1111	06-jul-2018	90.8
mango_dressing is a food	1111	06-jul-2018	98.0
prescription_iressa is a muscle	1111	06-jul-2018	94.5
oscar_wilde wrote the book a_woman_of_no_importance	1113	15-aug-2018	100.0
effectiveness is a synonym for services	1111	06-jul-2018	93.8
recluse_spider is an animal that is a kind of recluse	1111	06-jul-2018	93.8
paper is a company headquartered in the city new_york	1116	12-sep-2018	93.8
peachtree_street is a street in the city atlanta	1116	12-sep-2018	100.0