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
shore_lined_crab is a crustacean	1111	06-jul-2018	99.7
ontario_elections is an election	1111	06-jul-2018	98.7
cranberry_sauce is a fruit	1112	24-jul-2018	99.3
woolly_beech_aphid is an insect	1111	06-jul-2018	100.0
colossians_1_9_10 is an ethnic group	1111	06-jul-2018	95.3
mary and ark are family members	1113	15-aug-2018	93.8
large_herds is a generalization of antelope	1111	06-jul-2018	100.0
davis_guggenheim directed the movie inconvenient_truth	1115	03-sep-2018	100.0
chevrolet is a specific automobile maker dealer in missouri	1114	25-aug-2018	100.0
air_canada_center is the home venue for the sports team raptors	1116	12-sep-2018	100.0