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
technical_requirements is a political issue	1111	06-jul-2018	100.0
world_futures_society is a non-profit organization	1111	06-jul-2018	100.0
spider_tortoise is an amphibian	1111	06-jul-2018	100.0
castor_oil_seed is a fruit	1111	06-jul-2018	98.9
greenish_black_mold is a fungus	1112	24-jul-2018	92.3
jerusalem is the capital city of the country israel	1116	12-sep-2018	100.0
butter has color brown_color	1114	25-aug-2018	96.9
laurence_olivier starred in the movie hamlet	1116	12-sep-2018	96.9
states is a state or province located in the geopolitical location baja_california	1112	24-jul-2018	93.8
athletics is a sport taught in the country south_africa	1116	12-sep-2018	100.0