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
don_larson is an athlete	1111	06-jul-2018	94.7
lemongrass_beef is a type of meat	1111	06-jul-2018	99.5
indo_pacific_bonefish is a fish	1111	06-jul-2018	100.0
great_spruce_bark_beetle is an insect	1111	06-jul-2018	100.0
the_super_smashers is a musical artist	1111	06-jul-2018	96.0
phoenix_sky_harbor_international_airport is a generalization of temple_of_the_reclining_buddha	1114	25-aug-2018	100.0
laura_esquivel contributed to the creative work like_water_for_chocolate	1112	24-jul-2018	100.0
saab is a specific automobile maker dealer in __america	1116	12-sep-2018	93.8
portugal is a country also known as china	1111	06-jul-2018	99.6
patrick_mcgoohan is a person who died at the age of 80	1116	12-sep-2018	100.0