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
cotton_rag_art_paper is an office supply	1112	24-jul-2018	94.3
orbital_branches_of_maxillary_nerve is a nerve	1111	06-jul-2018	97.7
music_theatre is an academic field	1111	06-jul-2018	91.2
liberation_of_gabriel_king_book is a terrorist organization	1111	06-jul-2018	99.2
mesh_webbbed_spider is an arachnid	1111	06-jul-2018	100.0
andris_biedrins plays in the league nba	1116	12-sep-2018	100.0
seals is an animal that preys on birds	1114	25-aug-2018	100.0
uga hired richt	1111	06-jul-2018	98.4
telephone looks like connections	1113	15-aug-2018	93.8
trees is a plant that is a kind of baobab	1111	06-jul-2018	100.0