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
nationshealth_inc is a biotech company	1111	06-jul-2018	100.0
consciosness is an emotion	1111	06-jul-2018	96.7
harmony_lake is a trail	1111	06-jul-2018	100.0
superfine_sugar is a fruit	1112	24-jul-2018	99.6
eastern_red_bat is an animal	1111	06-jul-2018	97.1
orchestra was born in the city montreal	1116	12-sep-2018	100.0
states is a state or province located in the geopolitical location foreign_countries	1112	24-jul-2018	100.0
china is a country located in the geopolitical location neighboring_arab_countries	1111	06-jul-2018	100.0
tricep a muscle located in bodypart arm	1111	06-jul-2018	98.4
brees and reggie_bush are teammates	1112	24-jul-2018	99.6