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
chocolate_hills is a mountain range	1111	06-jul-2018	99.8
bouillon_cubes is a visualizable thing	1111	06-jul-2018	96.0
valuable_grain is a grain	1111	06-jul-2018	92.7
comment_india is software used by machine-learning scientists	1111	06-jul-2018	99.6
n10_districts is a state or a province	1111	06-jul-2018	96.9
super_bowl_xliv_the_indianapolis_colts is a sports team also known as ravens	1113	15-aug-2018	100.0
insects is an animal that preys on spider_mites	1111	06-jul-2018	99.9
reykjav_k is the capital city of the country iceland	1116	12-sep-2018	93.8
soccer is a sport taught in the country __america	1116	12-sep-2018	100.0
federal_aviation_administration is headquartered in the country us	1116	12-sep-2018	100.0