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
white_margin_unicornfish is a fish	1111	06-jul-2018	100.0
bowling_shaped_clock is an item often found in a bedroom	1111	06-jul-2018	99.9
richard_wood is a European person	1111	06-jul-2018	100.0
jean_jansem is a visual artist	1111	06-jul-2018	92.9
stubfoot_toad is an amphibian	1111	06-jul-2018	100.0
pavement is a musician in the genre indie	1111	06-jul-2018	100.0
prudential is a company in the economic sector of insurance	1114	25-aug-2018	100.0
volcan_citlaltepetl is related to north_america	1111	06-jul-2018	100.0
national is a bank that bought central_bank_of_india	1114	25-aug-2018	100.0
thomas is a politician who holds the office of president	1116	12-sep-2018	100.0