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
fig_leaves is a vegetable	1111	06-jul-2018	92.6
n1_10 is a performance metric used by machine-learning scientists	1111	06-jul-2018	100.0
james_lavistown_cheese is a cheese	1111	06-jul-2018	92.2
wtca is a radio station	1111	06-jul-2018	96.9
national_art_museum_of_sport is a museum	1111	06-jul-2018	92.6
uncompahgre_peak is a mountain in the state or province colorado	1116	12-sep-2018	100.0
isaac is the parent of esau	1112	24-jul-2018	94.9
leonys_martin is an athlete who led rangers	1116	12-sep-2018	96.9
mike_smith is a musician who is part of dave_clark_five	1115	03-sep-2018	98.4
ryan and joe_flacco_three_times are teammates	1111	06-jul-2018	100.0