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
diphenyl is a chemical	1111	06-jul-2018	100.0
support_award is a film festival	1111	06-jul-2018	100.0
haloferax_sp__fb247_7 is an archaeon	1111	06-jul-2018	100.0
free_music is a hobby	1111	06-jul-2018	99.7
touch_accessories is an item often found in a bathroom	1111	06-jul-2018	99.8
kpft is a radio station in the city houston	1116	12-sep-2018	93.8
countries is a generalization of u_s_	1116	12-sep-2018	100.0
hague is the capital city of the country netherlands	1116	12-sep-2018	98.8
subaru makes the automobile subaru_forester	1114	25-aug-2018	96.9
creatures is an animal that preys on reptiles	1112	24-jul-2018	93.8