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
springtime_fairy_shrimp is a crustacean	1111	06-jul-2018	99.7
leros is a visualizable scene	1111	06-jul-2018	99.5
cereal_crops_used_as_forage is a fruit	1111	06-jul-2018	92.5
william_sloan is an architect	1111	06-jul-2018	100.0
rehearsal_dinners_software is a tool	1112	24-jul-2018	99.4
emi is a company in the economic sector of media	1112	24-jul-2018	93.8
european_countries is a generalization of france_france	1115	03-sep-2018	93.8
boaz is the parent of obed	1112	24-jul-2018	100.0
marcus_amphitheatre is a stadium or event venue located in the city downtown_milwaukee	1116	12-sep-2018	96.9
turtles is an animal that preys on reptiles	1112	24-jul-2018	100.0