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
arteria_callosomariginalis is an artery	1111	06-jul-2018	99.3
theodore_roosevelt_lake is a trail	1111	06-jul-2018	100.0
new_albany_gazette is a blog	1111	06-jul-2018	100.0
citico_darter is a fish	1111	06-jul-2018	100.0
advocacy_record is a political blog	1111	06-jul-2018	98.8
the sport baseball was played at n1936_world_series	1116	12-sep-2018	100.0
sweet_potatoes is an agricultural product produced in __america	1116	12-sep-2018	99.2
epstein_barr_virus is a bacteria that causes nasopharyngeal_carcinoma	1112	24-jul-2018	100.0
john_steinbeck wrote the book grapes_of_wrath	1111	06-jul-2018	100.0
children is an animal that can develop mental_health_challenges	1115	03-sep-2018	98.4