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
araneus_dianiphus_xanthostichus is an arachnid	1112	24-jul-2018	100.0
n27_20_loss is an event outcome	1111	06-jul-2018	99.9
iceland___reykjavik is a country	1111	06-jul-2018	96.9
danish_tilsit_aka_tilsit_harvarti_cheese is a cheese	1111	06-jul-2018	93.6
sheep_tick is an invertebrate	1111	06-jul-2018	90.6
george_carlin was born in the city new_york	1116	12-sep-2018	100.0
ron_artest is an athlete who led chicago_bulls	1116	12-sep-2018	100.0
former_green_bay_packers is a sports team that played in championship	1113	15-aug-2018	100.0
bed is often found in lodge_rooms	1116	12-sep-2018	96.9
paris is the capital city of the country france_france	1116	12-sep-2018	100.0