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
aspergillus_oryzae is a fungus	1111	06-jul-2018	92.8
mission_grape is a wine	1111	06-jul-2018	92.2
brian_baumgartner is a male	1111	06-jul-2018	95.5
vienna_philharmonic is a musician	1111	06-jul-2018	99.9
soup_with_dumplings_recipe is a recipe	1111	06-jul-2018	99.6
louisiana_purchase_gardens_and_zoo is an aquarium in the city monroe	1116	12-sep-2018	100.0
the companies the_globe_and_mail and journal compete with eachother	1111	06-jul-2018	93.8
brazil is a country located in the geopolitical location south_america	1111	06-jul-2018	100.0
logar is a sate or province located in the country afghanistan	1116	12-sep-2018	99.2
josh_duhamel has wife fergie	1116	12-sep-2018	100.0