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
worcester_cathedral_st__peter_s_priory is a place of worship	1112	24-jul-2018	99.9
the_st__louis_post is a blog	1111	06-jul-2018	100.0
belle_vue_zoological_gardens is a zoo	1111	06-jul-2018	99.9
church_of_god_of_the_seventh_day is a religion	1111	06-jul-2018	100.0
one_scandinavian_language is a language	1111	06-jul-2018	99.6
spiders is an arthropod as well as scorpions also is	1111	06-jul-2018	100.0
ted_lilly plays for the team chicago_cubs	1116	12-sep-2018	99.8
columbia_university is a sports team that plays the sport football	1116	12-sep-2018	99.5
soccer is a sport with fans in the country us	1115	03-sep-2018	100.0
livestock is an animal that eats seeds	1115	03-sep-2018	100.0