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
southern_yellowjacket is an arthropod	1111	06-jul-2018	100.0
meadows_museum_of_fine_art is a museum	1111	06-jul-2018	100.0
oil___vinegar is a visualizable thing	1111	06-jul-2018	96.5
sacramento_pikeminnow is a fish	1111	06-jul-2018	100.0
united_farm_workers_ufw is a trade union	1111	06-jul-2018	90.7
professional_sports is a sport with fans in the country __america	1116	12-sep-2018	100.0
theodore_roosevelt is a politician who holds the office of president	1115	03-sep-2018	100.0
russian is a language used in the university harvard	1116	12-sep-2018	99.2
phillips_theme_tower is related to pepperdine	1116	12-sep-2018	100.0
peoples_republic is a country also known as china	1111	06-jul-2018	98.4