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
haloferax_sp__fib210_2 is an archaeon	1111	06-jul-2018	100.0
amy_stewart is an actor	1111	06-jul-2018	100.0
placement_counselor is a profession	1111	06-jul-2018	96.1
mirror_top is a household item	1111	06-jul-2018	95.8
world_government is an aquarium	1111	06-jul-2018	100.0
william_verity is a person born on the date n1917	1116	12-sep-2018	100.0
spiders is an animal that is a kind of invertebrates	1111	06-jul-2018	99.7
nottingham_east_midlands is a generalization of temple_of_the_reclining_buddha	1114	25-aug-2018	100.0
nissan is a specific automobile maker dealer in philadelphia	1114	25-aug-2018	99.7
temple was born in salt_lake	1116	12-sep-2018	99.7