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
military_wall_clock is an item found on a wall	1111	06-jul-2018	99.5
ceramic_toilet is an item often found in a bathroom	1111	06-jul-2018	99.9
theridiosomatidae is an arthropod	1111	06-jul-2018	93.0
red_sided_garter_snake is a vertebrate	1111	06-jul-2018	100.0
n1_corinthians_9_16 is an ethnic group	1111	06-jul-2018	97.2
gas_transit is a generalization of nuclear_missile	1111	06-jul-2018	100.0
tim_russert is a person who died at the age of 58	1116	12-sep-2018	100.0
hebrew is a language used in the university columbia_university	1116	12-sep-2018	99.6
marcus_amphitheatre is a stadium or event venue located in the city downtown_milwaukee	1116	12-sep-2018	96.9
sailing is a sport with fans in the country __america	1116	12-sep-2018	100.0