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
futon_sleeper_sofa is a kind of furniture	1111	06-jul-2018	99.6
right_pulmonary_artery is a vein	1111	06-jul-2018	98.8
tarun_majumdar is a male	1111	06-jul-2018	90.4
piquillo_peppers is a food	1111	06-jul-2018	98.3
gun_rights is a socio-political term	1111	06-jul-2018	100.0
brian_falkenborg is an athlete that flied out to position center	1111	06-jul-2018	100.0
stuttgart is the capital city of the state or province baden_w_rttemberg	1116	12-sep-2018	96.9
flowers is an agricultural product produced in _uk	1116	12-sep-2018	100.0
b__burgdorferi is a bacteria that causes lyme_disease	1115	03-sep-2018	93.8
shelley_duncan is an athlete who led yankees	1116	12-sep-2018	93.8