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
bacillus_okhensis is a bacterium	1111	06-jul-2018	100.0
business__ is a physical characteristic	1111	06-jul-2018	100.0
people_s_democratic_rights is a socio-political term	1111	06-jul-2018	95.6
wittenberg_tigers is a sports team	1111	06-jul-2018	100.0
phoenix_international is a building	1111	06-jul-2018	92.7
jack has wife katie	1116	12-sep-2018	93.8
cells is a subpart of the body within human_body	1111	06-jul-2018	100.0
straight_lines has shape angle	1112	24-jul-2018	93.8
scorpions is a musician in the genre metal	1113	15-aug-2018	93.8
bed is often found in lower_level_master	1115	03-sep-2018	93.8