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
mohave_shovel_nosed_snake is a reptile	1111	06-jul-2018	100.0
l__obesity is a disease	1111	06-jul-2018	92.1
coffee_choices is an agricultural product	1111	06-jul-2018	99.7
newquay_town_centre is a skyscraper	1111	06-jul-2018	99.8
twitch_recordings is a record label	1111	06-jul-2018	97.6
ferrets refers to more than one ferret	1111	06-jul-2018	100.0
toronto is a city that lies on the river don	1113	15-aug-2018	99.9
nissan is a specific automobile maker dealer in ohio	1114	25-aug-2018	100.0
china is a country located in the geopolitical location sources	1111	06-jul-2018	100.0
al_gore001 is a person who has residence in the city nashville	1116	12-sep-2018	100.0