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
hazelnut_tea is a beverage	1111	06-jul-2018	99.9
connection_engineering is an area of study within the field of machine learning	1111	06-jul-2018	99.9
islamic_jihad_terrorist_group is a political organization that is not part of the government	1111	06-jul-2018	99.8
chevron_corp_ is a pertroleum company	1116	12-sep-2018	100.0
swarovski_crystal_pearls is a visualizable attribute	1111	06-jul-2018	90.0
worms is an invertebrate animal that feeds on wood	1113	15-aug-2018	93.0
intc is a company also known as wal_mart_stores	1114	25-aug-2018	100.0
jesus_christ and paul001 are siblings	1114	25-aug-2018	93.8
chipmunks is an animal that eats seeds	1115	03-sep-2018	100.0
paris_charles_de_gaulle is a generalization of temple_of_the_reclining_buddha	1115	03-sep-2018	100.0