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
three_farmers is a farm	1111	06-jul-2018	99.9
tables_tables is an item found on the floor	1111	06-jul-2018	99.9
new_leaves is a vegetable	1111	06-jul-2018	93.9
erector_spinal_muscle is a muscle	1111	06-jul-2018	99.5
medicine_perspective is an academic field	1111	06-jul-2018	92.7
wlmt is a subpart of upn	1111	06-jul-2018	100.0
rattlesnakes is a synonym for spiders	1111	06-jul-2018	98.4
vauxhall_park is a park in the city central_london	1116	12-sep-2018	100.0
ductus_arteriosus arises from aorta	1116	12-sep-2018	100.0
charles_babington is a journalist that writes for the publication washington	1113	15-aug-2018	93.8