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
sue_long is a North American person	1111	06-jul-2018	91.2
digueti_straightbacked_clam_shrimp is a crustacean	1111	06-jul-2018	99.9
lyndon_kansas is an island	1111	06-jul-2018	96.5
group_picture is form of visual art	1111	06-jul-2018	99.2
contemporary_entry_doors is something found in or on buildings	1111	06-jul-2018	98.1
la_habana is the capital city of the country cuba	1116	12-sep-2018	99.9
projector looks like dvd	1111	06-jul-2018	93.8
cincinnati is the capital city of the state or province oh	1116	12-sep-2018	100.0
overkill is a musician in the genre metal	1114	25-aug-2018	93.8
odanacatib is a drug worked on by merck	1114	25-aug-2018	96.9