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
n11_07_32 is a term used by physicists	1111	06-jul-2018	93.8
black_carpenter_ant is an invertebrate	1111	06-jul-2018	96.2
botulinum_toxin_type_a is a chemical	1111	06-jul-2018	100.0
grains_ is a grain	1112	24-jul-2018	90.9
n12250 is a ZIP code	1111	06-jul-2018	99.8
football_players is a generalization of kerry_collins	1116	12-sep-2018	100.0
houston_astros_1b_jeff_bagwell is a subpart of mlb	1111	06-jul-2018	100.0
antonio_villaraigosa is a person who has residence in the geopolitical location los_angeles_ca	1112	24-jul-2018	100.0
community_arts is an academic program at the university college	1111	06-jul-2018	96.9
display001 looks like dvd_player	1114	25-aug-2018	93.8