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
german_wasp is an arthropod	1111	06-jul-2018	98.5
roger_raveel is a visual artist	1111	06-jul-2018	96.4
art_mold is a fungus	1111	06-jul-2018	92.1
aiseesoft_flac_to_mp3_converter_for_mac is a video game system	1111	06-jul-2018	98.9
monte_carlo_simulation is a scientific term	1111	06-jul-2018	100.0
holy_trinity and mary are family members	1111	06-jul-2018	93.8
snails is an animal that eats plants	1113	15-aug-2018	98.5
sparks is a city located in the state or province nevada	1116	12-sep-2018	99.6
glenn_gould was born in the country canada	1116	12-sep-2018	100.0
easyjet is a company that has an office in the city geneva	1112	24-jul-2018	100.0