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
trombidiidae is an arthropod	1111	06-jul-2018	99.4
artek_recordings is a record label	1111	06-jul-2018	97.8
description_scheme is a programming language	1111	06-jul-2018	98.1
minute_flowers is a plant	1111	06-jul-2018	93.3
large_triangles is a geometric shape	1111	06-jul-2018	92.3
spiders is an arthropod as well as arthropods also is	1111	06-jul-2018	100.0
bed is often found in northeast_bedroom	1115	03-sep-2018	93.8
brad_pitt is related to brad_pitt	1116	12-sep-2018	100.0
room_1495 is a room in the building biomedical_science_tower	1116	12-sep-2018	100.0
william_yardley is a journalist that writes for the publication times	1112	24-jul-2018	93.8