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
white_striped_free_tailed_bat is a mammal	1111	06-jul-2018	100.0
revolution_the is a socio-political term	1111	06-jul-2018	94.1
nicon is a convention	1111	06-jul-2018	99.9
succulent_leaves is a vegetable	1111	06-jul-2018	93.8
oval_desk is a kind of furniture	1111	06-jul-2018	99.8
insects feeds on snails	1114	25-aug-2018	100.0
knowshon_moreno and stafford are teammates	1111	06-jul-2018	100.0
samuel_j__palmisano is the CEO of ibm	1116	12-sep-2018	100.0
magic is a sports team that plays against knicks	1111	06-jul-2018	100.0
zeus is the father of apollo001	1116	12-sep-2018	100.0