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
standard_grain is a grain	1111	06-jul-2018	93.0
dinner_spoon is an item found on a table	1111	06-jul-2018	99.6
forested_lowlands can be a part of a landscape	1111	06-jul-2018	98.9
leningradsky_zoo is a zoo	1111	06-jul-2018	99.8
gauge_paper is an office supply	1111	06-jul-2018	92.9
ray_lewis plays the athletic team position player	1114	25-aug-2018	96.9
arthropods is called arachnids	1111	06-jul-2018	100.0
shockers is a sports team that played in games	1111	06-jul-2018	93.8
peter_steele is a musician who is part of type_o_negative	1114	25-aug-2018	93.8
cape_town is the capital city of the country south_africa	1116	12-sep-2018	100.0