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
heating_installations is a physical action	1111	06-jul-2018	91.5
n12879 is a ZIP code	1112	24-jul-2018	99.8
small_jumping_spider is an arachnid	1111	06-jul-2018	100.0
support_awareness is a character trait	1111	06-jul-2018	99.4
unidentified_insect is an invertebrate	1111	06-jul-2018	94.2
n3_ is a subpart of the body within system	1111	06-jul-2018	93.8
abdul_jalil_jan belongs to the religion islam	1116	12-sep-2018	100.0
metropolitan_museum_of_art is a tourist attraction in the city new_york	1116	12-sep-2018	93.8
baltimore_colts_in_super_bowl_iii is a sports team that won the super_bowl	1113	15-aug-2018	100.0
recluse is an arthropod as well as recluse_spider also is	1111	06-jul-2018	100.0