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
apionidae is an insect	1111	06-jul-2018	100.0
jesse_johnson is american	1111	06-jul-2018	100.0
barry_zito is a Mexican person	1111	06-jul-2018	100.0
arless is a physical characteristic	1111	06-jul-2018	100.0
annectant_gyrus is a kind of brain tissue	1111	06-jul-2018	99.0
vi is a sate or province located in the country usa	1116	12-sep-2018	99.2
thumb is a subpart of blood	1111	06-jul-2018	96.9
gillette_stadium is the home venue for the sports team new_england_patriots	1116	12-sep-2018	99.2
kpfk is a radio station in the city los_angeles_ca	1116	12-sep-2018	100.0
studies is a synonym for campus	1111	06-jul-2018	93.8