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
giant_water_bug is an invertebrate	1111	06-jul-2018	100.0
four_major_islands can be a part of a landscape	1111	06-jul-2018	99.3
puma_sneakers is a kind of clothing	1111	06-jul-2018	100.0
winter_park_area is a monument	1111	06-jul-2018	99.9
marcuson_creek is a river	1111	06-jul-2018	100.0
richard_nolte belongs to the ethnic group american	1116	12-sep-2018	100.0
lake_blue_ridge is a lake in the state or province georgia	1116	12-sep-2018	100.0
lisa001 was born in the city new_york	1116	12-sep-2018	100.0
ara_parseghian works for notre_dame	1112	24-jul-2018	93.8
himachal is a sate or province located in the country india	1116	12-sep-2018	100.0