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
physics_students is a victim	1111	06-jul-2018	100.0
tall_ornamental_grass is a plant	1111	06-jul-2018	99.1
all_hammers_and_hammer_drills is a tool	1112	24-jul-2018	99.2
thomas_hernandez is an astronaut	1111	06-jul-2018	100.0
american_mental_health_association is a non-profit organization	1111	06-jul-2018	99.8
father is the father of lord_jesus	1115	03-sep-2018	100.0
parrots is an animal that eats seeds	1115	03-sep-2018	100.0
eric_e__schmidt is a person who was written about in new_york_times	1111	06-jul-2018	100.0
wtop is a radio station in the city washington_d_c_	1116	12-sep-2018	99.6
israel is the parent of yeshua	1115	03-sep-2018	93.8