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
delalande_s_beaked_blind_snake is a reptile	1111	06-jul-2018	100.0
elephant_bone is a bone	1112	24-jul-2018	90.8
critical_early_years is a non-disease physiological condition	1111	06-jul-2018	98.3
omnibus_appropriations_bill is a legislative bill	1111	06-jul-2018	91.6
john_riley is an architect	1111	06-jul-2018	100.0
cells is a subpart of the body within way	1111	06-jul-2018	100.0
mazda is a specific automobile maker dealer in usa	1114	25-aug-2018	100.0
national is a bank that bought icbc	1114	25-aug-2018	100.0
columbia is a city also known as port_clements	1111	06-jul-2018	93.8
leg a muscle located in bodypart leg	1115	03-sep-2018	93.8