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
fantastic_picture is form of visual art	1111	06-jul-2018	98.1
ichneumon_fly is an animal	1111	06-jul-2018	95.7
electricians_hand_tools is a tool	1112	24-jul-2018	98.8
applebees_tuscan_cheese is a cheese	1111	06-jul-2018	90.6
kamloops_airport is a transportation port	1111	06-jul-2018	100.0
toyota is a specific automobile maker dealer in texas	1115	03-sep-2018	100.0
salman_rushdie was born in bombay	1116	12-sep-2018	100.0
mick_jagger is a musician who is part of rolling_stones	1116	12-sep-2018	100.0
britney_spears and adnan_ghalib are family members	1111	06-jul-2018	93.8
scorpions is an arthropod as well as arachnids also is	1111	06-jul-2018	100.0