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
computational_modeling is an area of study within the field of machine learning	1111	06-jul-2018	99.9
flat_huntsman_spider is an arachnid	1112	24-jul-2018	100.0
rick_johnson is a chef	1111	06-jul-2018	100.0
nostalgia_bug is an invertebrate	1111	06-jul-2018	94.5
variegated_ornamental_grasses is a plant	1111	06-jul-2018	99.2
the home stadium of derrek_lee is wrigley_field	1116	12-sep-2018	100.0
fiumicino_airport is an airport in the city rome	1116	12-sep-2018	100.0
kassams is a type of weapon produced in israel	1114	25-aug-2018	99.8
european_states is a generalization of netherlands	1116	12-sep-2018	100.0
long_island_railroad is a transportation system located in the city new_york	1116	12-sep-2018	100.0