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
lotus_leaves is a vegetable	1111	06-jul-2018	94.0
psp_3000_slim is a consumer electronic device	1111	06-jul-2018	100.0
n8_1_victory is an event outcome	1111	06-jul-2018	99.9
sphingomonas_natatoria is a bacterium	1111	06-jul-2018	100.0
barley_rye is a grain	1111	06-jul-2018	90.7
the country falkland_islands uses the currency pounds	1116	12-sep-2018	100.0
national is a bank that bought treasury	1114	25-aug-2018	100.0
william_mckinley is a U.S. politician who holds the office of president	1116	12-sep-2018	99.5
states is a subpart of south_america	1111	06-jul-2018	99.6
john_marks is the leader of the city tallahassee	1116	12-sep-2018	100.0