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
third_cerebral_ventricle is a vein	1111	06-jul-2018	96.9
agile_kangaroo_rat is a mammal	1111	06-jul-2018	100.0
investment_period is an economic sector	1112	24-jul-2018	99.9
ian_king is an architect	1111	06-jul-2018	96.9
dancing_in_the_street is a musical album	1111	06-jul-2018	99.9
maitland is a city located in the state or province florida	1116	12-sep-2018	98.4
lungs is a subpart of the body within side001	1111	06-jul-2018	100.0
jason_vargas is an athlete that flied out to position center	1111	06-jul-2018	100.0
carotid arises from subclavian_artery	1116	12-sep-2018	100.0
spiders is an animal that is a kind of brown_recluse	1111	06-jul-2018	100.0