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
pigmy_splayfoot_salamander is an amphibian	1111	06-jul-2018	100.0
margherita_bean is a legume	1111	06-jul-2018	97.9
responsible_thinking is a cognitive action	1111	06-jul-2018	99.9
interface_sequence_returns is a machine-learning conference	1112	24-jul-2018	95.3
urchin_emperor_shrimp is a crustacean	1111	06-jul-2018	99.7
the coach ronny_paulino won the trophy or tournament world_series	1111	06-jul-2018	100.0
nancy001 is a person who belongs to the organization college	1112	24-jul-2018	99.2
spain is a country located in the geopolitical location foreign_countries	1112	24-jul-2018	100.0
him contributed to the creative work commandments	1113	15-aug-2018	100.0
krcg_tv is a TV affiliate of the network cbs_evening_news	1116	12-sep-2018	99.2