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
kids_shirts is a kind of clothing	1111	06-jul-2018	92.3
teen_strings_magazine is a magazine	1111	06-jul-2018	99.8
cat_scan_neck_lymphatic_nodes is a lymph node	1111	06-jul-2018	99.6
brown_dog_tick is an invertebrate	1111	06-jul-2018	99.9
n23_year_period is a sports game	1111	06-jul-2018	99.9
jobs is a person who moved to the state maine	1115	03-sep-2018	99.2
southern_mississippi_golden_eagles is an organization known by the acronym southern_miss_lady_golden_eagles	1115	03-sep-2018	100.0
furbearers is an animal that preys on raccoon	1113	15-aug-2018	100.0
spiders is called scorpions	1111	06-jul-2018	100.0
scavengers feeds on insects	1116	12-sep-2018	100.0