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
first_informal_meeting is a perception action	1111	06-jul-2018	92.7
jane_howard is a female	1111	06-jul-2018	100.0
bax_pax_hostel is a place to ski	1111	06-jul-2018	91.1
bernard_lovell is a scientist	1111	06-jul-2018	92.4
zoological_garden is an aquarium	1111	06-jul-2018	100.0
spiders is an arthropod that looks like insects	1111	06-jul-2018	100.0
terry_tempest_williams held the position of author	1114	25-aug-2018	100.0
veins is a subpart of the body within side001	1111	06-jul-2018	100.0
northern_territory is a state or province located in the geopolitical location australia	1115	03-sep-2018	93.8
Eating oats decreases the risk of heart_disease	1115	03-sep-2018	100.0