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
thioalkalimicrobium_microaerophilum is a bacterium	1111	06-jul-2018	100.0
kansas_city_kansas_street_blues_festival is a music festival	1111	06-jul-2018	100.0
phantom_shiner is a fish	1111	06-jul-2018	100.0
chaucer_s_choice_cheese is a cheese	1111	06-jul-2018	96.6
janice_gallagher is american	1111	06-jul-2018	91.5
manhattan_mall___shopping_center is a shopping mall in the city nueva_york	1116	12-sep-2018	100.0
schiphol_airport is a generalization of temple_of_the_reclining_buddha	1114	25-aug-2018	100.0
corvette is a company also known as general_motors	1114	25-aug-2018	93.8
toronto is a city that lies on the river don	1113	15-aug-2018	99.9
lake_leelanau is a lake in the state or province michigan	1116	12-sep-2018	100.0