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
carolina_red_barbecue_sauce is a condiment	1111	06-jul-2018	99.8
jersey_shield_cheese is a cheese	1111	06-jul-2018	96.2
tropical_pineapple_rum_cake is a baked good	1111	06-jul-2018	100.0
more_european_countries is a geopolitical entity that is an organization	1111	06-jul-2018	94.5
hives_lymph_nodes is a lymph node	1111	06-jul-2018	99.0
charles_darwin001 is a person born on the date n1809	1116	12-sep-2018	100.0
moosehead_lake is a lake in the state or province maine	1116	12-sep-2018	91.8
enkhuizen is a city located in the country netherlands	1116	12-sep-2018	99.6
nissan makes the automobile nissan_maxima	1114	25-aug-2018	100.0
jack_london was born in the city oakland	1116	12-sep-2018	100.0