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
the_sacral_plexus is a nerve	1111	06-jul-2018	96.8
motorcycle_jumping is a physical action	1111	06-jul-2018	92.5
blue_speckled_prawn_goby is an animal	1111	06-jul-2018	100.0
newton_community_farm is a farm	1111	06-jul-2018	99.9
united_states_senate_subcommittee is a political organization that is not part of the government	1111	06-jul-2018	100.0
gatwick_express is a transportation system located in the city victoria	1116	12-sep-2018	100.0
engineering_degrees is a type of technology	1116	12-sep-2018	100.0
andrews is a person who moved to the state washington	1113	15-aug-2018	100.0
large_herds is a generalization of springbok	1111	06-jul-2018	99.6
cnn__msnbc is a company in the economic sector of news	1112	24-jul-2018	100.0