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
morocco_s_atlas_mountains is a mountain range	1111	06-jul-2018	99.7
tert is a protein	1111	06-jul-2018	95.2
lighthouse_inn_resort is a place to ski	1111	06-jul-2018	100.0
responsive_computer is an item found on a table	1111	06-jul-2018	100.0
succulent_grass is a plant	1111	06-jul-2018	99.7
reggie_bush and brees are teammates	1112	24-jul-2018	99.6
scarlett_johansson is an actor that worked with the director woody_allen	1114	25-aug-2018	100.0
pueblo_zoo is a zoo in the city pueblo	1116	12-sep-2018	100.0
sweden_stockholm is the capital city of the country sweden	1116	12-sep-2018	93.8
department is an organization also known as service	1112	24-jul-2018	100.0