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
black_bellied_fruit_bat is a mammal	1111	06-jul-2018	100.0
prayer_shawls is a kind of clothing	1111	06-jul-2018	92.1
phone_texas is a board game	1111	06-jul-2018	100.0
education_resolution is a political issue	1111	06-jul-2018	99.9
warm_cherry is a fruit	1111	06-jul-2018	99.8
boston_red_sox_tickets is headquartered in the state or province new_york	1116	12-sep-2018	93.8
english is the language of the country canada	1116	12-sep-2018	100.0
arrowhead is an attraction made of copper	1116	12-sep-2018	100.0
rodney was born in the city wilmington	1116	12-sep-2018	93.8
barking is a tourist attraction in the city central_london	1116	12-sep-2018	96.1