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
harrow_town_centre is a skyscraper	1111	06-jul-2018	99.9
epermeniidae is a mollusk	1111	06-jul-2018	100.0
hairy_squat_lobster is a crustacean	1111	06-jul-2018	99.9
north_mountain_vineyard___winery is a winery	1111	06-jul-2018	100.0
the_western_producer is a newspaper	1111	06-jul-2018	96.2
southampton is a generalization of temple_of_the_reclining_buddha	1114	25-aug-2018	100.0
cabbage is related to china	1111	06-jul-2018	100.0
presidents_kennedy_and_johnson is a politician who holds the office of secretary	1114	25-aug-2018	99.7
top is found in volcano	1112	24-jul-2018	100.0
china is a country also known as bangladesh	1111	06-jul-2018	93.8