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
hocks is a visualizable object	1111	06-jul-2018	98.5
black_throated_thistletail is a bird	1111	06-jul-2018	100.0
mlynky_cave is a cave	1111	06-jul-2018	100.0
mercury_montego_engines is a kind of automobile engine	1111	06-jul-2018	100.0
streptomyces_asterosporus is a bacterium	1111	06-jul-2018	100.0
johnson001 is a musician who plays the piano	1114	25-aug-2018	93.8
clinton_white is related to english	1116	12-sep-2018	100.0
fujitsu is a company also known as nec_corp	1114	25-aug-2018	93.8
calhoun works for uconn	1111	06-jul-2018	93.8
christine_hauser is a journalist that writes for the publication times	1112	24-jul-2018	99.6