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
hot_fudge is a food	1111	06-jul-2018	100.0
two_spy is a parlour game	1111	06-jul-2018	91.0
stalker_cave is a cave	1111	06-jul-2018	100.0
redwood_tree is a plant	1111	06-jul-2018	99.3
wheat_flour_tortillas is an agricultural product	1111	06-jul-2018	99.1
nick_hogan is the parent of linda_hogan	1115	03-sep-2018	100.0
kpnx_tv is headquartered in the city downtown_phoenix	1116	12-sep-2018	100.0
glenn_collins is a journalist that writes for the publication times	1112	24-jul-2018	98.4
dan is a person who has attended the school state	1112	24-jul-2018	93.8
widow is called spiders	1111	06-jul-2018	100.0