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
superior_quality_american is an ethnic group	1111	06-jul-2018	92.6
spectacled_sculpin is a fish	1111	06-jul-2018	100.0
jelly_beans__tropical_mix is a kind of candy	1111	06-jul-2018	98.5
m_4_carbine is a weapon	1111	06-jul-2018	96.3
ralph_hale is an Australian person	1111	06-jul-2018	91.3
ing is a bank in scotland	1114	25-aug-2018	96.9
nissan is a specific automobile maker dealer in seattle	1114	25-aug-2018	99.2
encinitas is a city located in the state or province california	1116	12-sep-2018	99.8
jacob has wife elizabeth	1116	12-sep-2018	93.8
kxla is a TV station in the city los_angeles_ca	1116	12-sep-2018	100.0