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
russell_pond is a trail	1111	06-jul-2018	100.0
groovy_modern_metal is a genre of music	1111	06-jul-2018	99.5
eastern_red_bat is an animal	1111	06-jul-2018	97.1
limb_gangrene is a disease	1111	06-jul-2018	91.2
room_s_door is an item often found in a hallway	1111	06-jul-2018	100.0
bugs is an animal that preys on spider_mites	1111	06-jul-2018	99.8
bey and jay_z are family members	1111	06-jul-2018	93.8
sweats is a clothing item to go with tops	1111	06-jul-2018	93.8
boston_phoenix is a newspaper in the city boston	1116	12-sep-2018	100.0
jared_cotter died in the city west_orange	1116	12-sep-2018	100.0