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
uterine_tube is a part of the body	1111	06-jul-2018	94.7
darren_murphy is an author in the scientific field of machine learning	1111	06-jul-2018	100.0
iliac_muscle is a muscle	1111	06-jul-2018	99.5
scurfy_scale is an arthropod	1111	06-jul-2018	100.0
dave_holmes is an actor	1111	06-jul-2018	100.0
states is a state or province located in the geopolitical location jerusalem	1112	24-jul-2018	100.0
san_francisco is a city that lies on the river yosemite	1112	24-jul-2018	93.8
treasure_island is a tourist attraction in the city las_vegas	1116	12-sep-2018	100.0
feline_friends is an animal that preys on cat	1113	15-aug-2018	98.4
mitsubishi makes the automobile colt	1114	25-aug-2018	94.4