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
posterior_vena_cava is a vein	1111	06-jul-2018	98.8
jersey_shield_cheese is a cheese	1111	06-jul-2018	96.2
tent_caterpillars is an insect	1111	06-jul-2018	100.0
jeffery_s__miller is a Canadian person	1111	06-jul-2018	91.6
greenville_hospital_system_university_medical_center is a hospital	1111	06-jul-2018	90.6
courier_journal is a newspaper in the city louisville	1116	12-sep-2018	93.8
spiders is an arthropod as well as bugs also is	1111	06-jul-2018	99.2
trout is a fish that can be served with the food rice_pilaf in a meal (or dish)	1112	24-jul-2018	100.0
katrina001 was born in the city new_york	1116	12-sep-2018	100.0
wlwt is a TV station in the city cincinnati	1116	12-sep-2018	98.4