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
room_s_door is an item often found in a hallway	1111	06-jul-2018	100.0
spanish_speaking_countries is a country	1111	06-jul-2018	98.6
tar is a musical instrument	1111	06-jul-2018	93.8
clear_round is a geometric shape	1111	06-jul-2018	94.3
inachidae is an arthropod	1111	06-jul-2018	96.5
earnest_byner plays the athletic team position running_back	1111	06-jul-2018	100.0
tournament is a sports game that took place on the date n2002	1116	12-sep-2018	100.0
royal_ontario_museum is a museum in the city toronto	1116	12-sep-2018	100.0
pests is a type of birds	1114	25-aug-2018	100.0
black_widows is a synonym for spiders	1111	06-jul-2018	98.4