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
mount_shasta_california is a mountain	1111	06-jul-2018	99.9
maple_bacon is a type of meat	1111	06-jul-2018	99.2
northern_woolly_sculpin is a fish	1111	06-jul-2018	100.0
movie_last_orders is a movie	1111	06-jul-2018	100.0
school_academic_records is a record label	1111	06-jul-2018	98.1
flea an arthropod that can be very irritating to mammal cats	1116	12-sep-2018	94.6
agassi is an athlete who wins french_open	1116	12-sep-2018	99.2
daniel_boulud_brasserie is a restaurant in the city las_vegas	1116	12-sep-2018	100.0
beds is often found in casita	1111	06-jul-2018	100.0
rocky_mountain is a mountain in the state or province colorado	1116	12-sep-2018	100.0