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
heart_crab is a crustacean	1111	06-jul-2018	99.7
byron_chung is an Asian person	1111	06-jul-2018	100.0
whitish_light is a perception event	1111	06-jul-2018	96.7
antihistamine_claritin is a drug	1111	06-jul-2018	100.0
international_stores is a retail store	1111	06-jul-2018	99.8
belfastzoo is a zoo in the city belfast	1116	12-sep-2018	100.0
kveo_tv is a TV affiliate of the network nbc_news	1116	12-sep-2018	100.0
foliage has color gold	1111	06-jul-2018	100.0
george_miller held the position of rep_	1115	03-sep-2018	100.0
security concerns information	1116	12-sep-2018	99.2