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
reply_thanks is software used by machine-learning scientists	1111	06-jul-2018	99.8
heron_chicks is an animal	1111	06-jul-2018	94.0
n69_62_loss is an event outcome	1111	06-jul-2018	99.9
same_phone is an item found on a table	1111	06-jul-2018	99.9
juan_manuel_vargas is a South American person	1111	06-jul-2018	93.6
san_diego_padres is headquartered in the state or province new_york	1116	12-sep-2018	99.9
mother is the mother of elizabeth	1116	12-sep-2018	93.8
planes has shape angle	1112	24-jul-2018	93.8
european_nations is a generalization of austria	1115	03-sep-2018	99.6
insects is a type of crickets	1114	25-aug-2018	100.0