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
robin_braun is american	1111	06-jul-2018	91.2
white_eared_cotton_rat is a vertebrate	1112	24-jul-2018	100.0
scallops_pasta_recipe is a recipe	1111	06-jul-2018	99.6
pure_grass is a vegetable	1111	06-jul-2018	96.6
cut_greens is a food	1111	06-jul-2018	98.2
cells is a subpart of the body within umbilical_cord	1111	06-jul-2018	100.0
ashdod is a city also known as jerusalem	1112	24-jul-2018	93.8
richard_wright wrote the book black_boy	1111	06-jul-2018	100.0
dickinson was born in chicago_south	1116	12-sep-2018	100.0
mr__bush represents the region new	1115	03-sep-2018	96.9