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
n11_19_02 is a dataset used within the scientific field of machine learning	1112	24-jul-2018	100.0
oaxaca_arboreal_alligator_lizard is a reptile	1111	06-jul-2018	100.0
brown_shade is a color	1112	24-jul-2018	99.8
jewish_internet is a visualizable attribute	1111	06-jul-2018	90.7
the_outsiders_tv_show is a TV show	1111	06-jul-2018	100.0
republican is a person who has residence in the geopolitical location nebraska	1116	12-sep-2018	100.0
tyco_healthcare is headquartered in the state or province massachusetts	1116	12-sep-2018	100.0
easyjet is a company that has an office in the city geneva	1112	24-jul-2018	100.0
martin_truex_jr_ has spouse jeff	1116	12-sep-2018	98.4
black_pepper is an agricultural product that is usually cooked with basil	1114	25-aug-2018	100.0