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
japan_studies_association is a professional organization	1111	06-jul-2018	90.7
tour_de_berne_u23 is a sports race	1111	06-jul-2018	100.0
steel_welded_pipe is a building material	1111	06-jul-2018	97.0
visual_smorgasbord is software	1111	06-jul-2018	94.6
xanax_data is an archaeon	1111	06-jul-2018	91.7
flea an arthropod that can be very irritating to mammal dog	1116	12-sep-2018	100.0
dragonflies is a type of insects	1111	06-jul-2018	100.0
blockbuster_express is a company that has an office in the country mexico	1114	25-aug-2018	100.0
animals is an animal that preys on spiders	1111	06-jul-2018	100.0
grape is an agricultural product produced in __america	1116	12-sep-2018	100.0