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
michael_i is a monarch	1111	06-jul-2018	96.7
justice_max_baer is a judge	1111	06-jul-2018	97.6
ice_fog is a weather phenomenon	1111	06-jul-2018	98.9
income_ratio_calculator is an arthropod	1111	06-jul-2018	99.7
technique_process is a cognitive action	1111	06-jul-2018	99.9
san_francisco is a city that lies on the river yosemite	1112	24-jul-2018	93.8
spadina_aquarium is an aquarium in the city toronto	1116	12-sep-2018	100.0
little_gas is a generalization of nuclear_missile	1111	06-jul-2018	100.0
pain is an emotion associated with chronic_pain_syndromes	1115	03-sep-2018	100.0
luis_castillo plays the sport baseball	1116	12-sep-2018	98.4