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
land_use_activities is a hobby	1111	06-jul-2018	100.0
n8_9_percent is a machine-learning algorithm	1111	06-jul-2018	99.5
gall_wasps is an insect	1111	06-jul-2018	100.0
galloway_arkansas is a beach	1111	06-jul-2018	99.3
city_hall_art_gallery is a museum	1111	06-jul-2018	100.0
large_herds refers to more than one sheep	1111	06-jul-2018	99.6
chevrolet is a company that produces cavalier	1114	25-aug-2018	93.8
thumb is a subpart of blood	1111	06-jul-2018	96.9
pondicherry is a sate or province located in the country india	1116	12-sep-2018	96.9
shrubbery is a plant that is a kind of palm	1111	06-jul-2018	100.0