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
gastonia_north_carolina is an island	1111	06-jul-2018	96.2
four_months is a parlour game	1111	06-jul-2018	100.0
gold_wall_clock is an item found on a wall	1111	06-jul-2018	99.4
hinge_beak_shrimp is a crustacean	1111	06-jul-2018	99.7
esther_andrews is a director	1111	06-jul-2018	90.4
general_motors_corp_ is a company headquartered in the city detroit	1116	12-sep-2018	100.0
bicycle is a sport with fans in the country __america	1116	12-sep-2018	100.0
great_artery arises from left_ventricle	1116	12-sep-2018	100.0
diamondbacks is an organization also known as marlins	1113	15-aug-2018	93.8
lisbon is the capital city of the country portugal	1116	12-sep-2018	96.9