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
missouri_land_rover is an automobile manufacturer	1111	06-jul-2018	95.0
antony_wilton is a director	1111	06-jul-2018	91.4
jersey_shield_cheese is a cheese	1111	06-jul-2018	96.2
cysteine_dioxygenase is a protein	1111	06-jul-2018	100.0
diversified_communications_tower is a skyscraper	1111	06-jul-2018	100.0
tohoku_shinkansen is a transportation system located in the city tokyo	1116	12-sep-2018	100.0
perennials is an agricultural product grown in region	1116	12-sep-2018	99.8
spiders is an arthropod that looks like flies	1111	06-jul-2018	100.0
lobster is a type of crustaceans	1113	15-aug-2018	96.9
mammals is an animal that eats fruits	1114	25-aug-2018	100.0