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
approximate_inference is an area of study within the field of machine learning	1111	06-jul-2018	100.0
small_stars is a geometric shape	1111	06-jul-2018	96.3
more_gratitude is an emotion	1111	06-jul-2018	99.0
st___thomas_church is a place of worship	1111	06-jul-2018	99.9
sichuan_salamander is an amphibian	1111	06-jul-2018	100.0
urban_meyer coaches the team beloved_ohio_state_buckeyes	1116	12-sep-2018	100.0
n15981 is the number of people that died in the event n2011_t_hoku_earthquake_and_tsunami	1116	12-sep-2018	100.0
raccoon is an animal that preys on furbearers	1113	15-aug-2018	100.0
vancouver_general_hospital is a hospital in the city vancouver	1116	12-sep-2018	100.0
rights is an organization also known as international_journal	1111	06-jul-2018	93.8