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
rice_cutgrass is a fruit	1111	06-jul-2018	99.1
front_porches is something found in or on buildings	1111	06-jul-2018	98.4
n30601 is a ZIP code	1111	06-jul-2018	99.4
poker_online_card_game is a board game	1111	06-jul-2018	96.2
bensenville_press is a political blog	1111	06-jul-2018	98.6
bed is often found in private_living_room	1111	06-jul-2018	96.9
lice is an invertebrate animal that feeds on blood	1111	06-jul-2018	99.9
diana has husband charles	1116	12-sep-2018	99.2
states is a state or province located in the geopolitical location tel_aviv	1113	15-aug-2018	99.8
arabic is the language of the country algeria	1114	25-aug-2018	100.0