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
computer_clock is an item often found in a bedroom	1111	06-jul-2018	99.9
deppe_s_centipede_snake is a reptile	1111	06-jul-2018	100.0
light_grey_line is a perception event	1111	06-jul-2018	96.1
securing_advertising is a physical action	1111	06-jul-2018	95.0
ettione_stuckey is an African person	1111	06-jul-2018	90.5
john_mcenroe is an athlete who wins us_open	1115	03-sep-2018	93.8
cells is a subpart of the body within adult_bone_marrow	1111	06-jul-2018	100.0
atlanta is the home city of the sports team georgia_state	1116	12-sep-2018	100.0
barry_larkin is an athlete who led reds	1116	12-sep-2018	96.9
mong_koo_chung is the CEO of the automobile maker company hyundai	1116	12-sep-2018	100.0