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
megaspilidae is a mollusk	1111	06-jul-2018	100.0
important_energy_resource is a refinery product	1111	06-jul-2018	91.5
wayne_ohio is an island	1111	06-jul-2018	95.9
sordid_murder ia a crime or charge	1111	06-jul-2018	92.7
turtles_cave is a cave	1111	06-jul-2018	100.0
america_online is an organization known by the acronym aol_video	1115	03-sep-2018	99.2
work participated in the event legacy	1113	15-aug-2018	93.8
bronx_zoo is a zoo in the city new_york	1116	12-sep-2018	100.0
saturn is the parent of uranus	1111	06-jul-2018	100.0
shaq__o_neal is an athlete also known as shaquille_oneal	1116	12-sep-2018	100.0