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
sphingomonas_melonis is a bacterium	1111	06-jul-2018	100.0
services_aluminum is a building material	1111	06-jul-2018	97.1
johnny_and_the_dead is a book	1111	06-jul-2018	100.0
paddle_flap_scorpionfish is a fish	1111	06-jul-2018	100.0
burley_tobacco is a food	1111	06-jul-2018	97.5
snails is a type of invertebrates	1114	25-aug-2018	100.0
ski is a sport taught in the country us	1115	03-sep-2018	100.0
louisiana is a state that is bordered by the state colorado	1114	25-aug-2018	93.8
community_arts is an academic program at the university college	1111	06-jul-2018	96.9
spiders is an arthropod that looks like mites	1111	06-jul-2018	100.0