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
aderidae is an insect	1111	06-jul-2018	100.0
national_co_ordination_committee is a professional organization	1111	06-jul-2018	100.0
altoona_iowa is an island	1111	06-jul-2018	96.8
the_shadow_in_the_north is a book	1111	06-jul-2018	100.0
bisceglie is a geopolitical entity that is a location	1111	06-jul-2018	92.2
oscar_wilde wrote the book the_picture_of_dorian_grey	1113	15-aug-2018	96.9
squirrels is an animal that eats seeds	1115	03-sep-2018	100.0
bacon is related to pig	1114	25-aug-2018	100.0
major_league_baseball is headquartered in the state or province new_york	1116	12-sep-2018	99.6
staph is a bacteria that causes infections	1113	15-aug-2018	96.6