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
black_molds is a fungus	1111	06-jul-2018	91.5
penzance is a location	1112	24-jul-2018	90.7
narrow_3_2_defeat is an event outcome	1111	06-jul-2018	99.9
n1_3_weeks is a sports game	1111	06-jul-2018	99.8
western_tent_tortoise is an amphibian	1111	06-jul-2018	100.0
william_r__forstchen wrote the book one_second_after	1112	24-jul-2018	98.4
the sports team indians was the winner of n1920_world_series	1116	12-sep-2018	98.4
rover is a specific automobile maker dealer in _uk	1116	12-sep-2018	100.0
william_rockefeller and john_d__rockefeller are siblings	1114	25-aug-2018	93.8
fruit_bats is an animal that eats seeds	1115	03-sep-2018	100.0