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
school_portraits is form of visual art	1111	06-jul-2018	99.0
psocoptera is an arthropod	1111	06-jul-2018	94.8
alicia_machado is a Mexican person	1111	06-jul-2018	96.9
recent_capacity is a character trait	1111	06-jul-2018	100.0
william_grayson is a chef	1111	06-jul-2018	100.0
black_pepper is an agricultural product that is usually cooked with honey	1114	25-aug-2018	99.6
manu_ginobili is an athlete coached by gregg_popovich	1116	12-sep-2018	100.0
al_arish is a city located in the geopolitical location egypt	1112	24-jul-2018	93.8
p__vivax is a bacteria that causes malaria	1115	03-sep-2018	93.8
the_waikiki_aquarium is an aquarium in the city honolulu	1116	12-sep-2018	100.0