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
sugar_alcohols is a fruit	1111	06-jul-2018	99.0
buffalos_milk_cheese is a cheese	1111	06-jul-2018	93.1
contact_dell is a book	1111	06-jul-2018	90.5
adelaide_airport is a transportation port	1112	24-jul-2018	100.0
barbecued_salmon is a fish	1111	06-jul-2018	100.0
bud_norris plays the sport baseball	1116	12-sep-2018	100.0
humphreys_peak is a mountain in the state or province arizona	1116	12-sep-2018	100.0
grand_lake is a lake in the state or province oklahoma	1116	12-sep-2018	99.6
inger_gleerup died in the country bulgaria	1116	12-sep-2018	100.0
uterus is a subpart of blood	1111	06-jul-2018	99.9