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
square_curve is a geometric shape	1111	06-jul-2018	94.2
bristol_area is a monument	1111	06-jul-2018	100.0
valerie_wallace is a North American person	1111	06-jul-2018	91.4
way_mold is a fungus	1111	06-jul-2018	96.2
farmers_and_merchants_bank_of_long_beach is a bank	1111	06-jul-2018	100.0
unaids is an organization created at the date n1995	1116	12-sep-2018	100.0
ottawa_senators is headquartered in the state or province new_york	1116	12-sep-2018	100.0
jonathan_finer is a journalist that writes for the publication washington	1113	15-aug-2018	93.8
fred_taylor plays the athletic team position running_back	1113	15-aug-2018	100.0
china is a country also known as romania	1111	06-jul-2018	98.4