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
western_tent_tortoise is an amphibian	1111	06-jul-2018	100.0
great_western_main_line is a transportation system	1111	06-jul-2018	100.0
turnip_tops is a food	1111	06-jul-2018	97.7
hundred_nuclear_weapons is a weapon	1111	06-jul-2018	98.5
high_quality_articles is a kind of media	1111	06-jul-2018	99.1
salman_rushdie was born in bombay	1116	12-sep-2018	100.0
bartholomew is a city located in the state or province indiana	1116	12-sep-2018	100.0
peace is found in valley	1112	24-jul-2018	93.8
arkansas_state_university is an organization known by the acronym arkansas_state_university	1116	12-sep-2018	100.0
ken_griffey plays for the team reds	1116	12-sep-2018	98.4