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
flocking is a physical action	1111	06-jul-2018	95.8
carburetor_software is a tool	1112	24-jul-2018	98.7
ashley_lake is a trail	1111	06-jul-2018	100.0
trinidad_and_tobago_airline_pilots_association is a trade union	1112	24-jul-2018	90.7
fultondale is a visualizable object	1111	06-jul-2018	99.0
tick is called deer_tick	1116	12-sep-2018	100.0
george_stevens directed the movie the_diary_of_anne_frank	1115	03-sep-2018	100.0
tampa is the location of the event crash_that_killed_5_men_on_i_275_still_under_investigation	1116	12-sep-2018	100.0
the sports leage cfl uses the venue investors_group_field	1111	06-jul-2018	100.0
duck is an animal that eats orange	1114	25-aug-2018	99.9