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
graceful_decorator_crab is a crustacean	1111	06-jul-2018	99.7
calumet_street is a street	1111	06-jul-2018	100.0
three_photo is form of visual art	1111	06-jul-2018	98.8
warming_factor is a physical action	1112	24-jul-2018	92.2
haloferax_sp__50c21_6 is an archaeon	1111	06-jul-2018	100.0
king_george has citizenship in the country greece	1112	24-jul-2018	93.8
federal_deposit_insurance is headquartered in the country u_s_	1116	12-sep-2018	93.8
national is a bank in switzerland_switzerland	1114	25-aug-2018	100.0
barack_obama is a politician who holds the office of potus	1115	03-sep-2018	100.0
the coach marco_sturm won the trophy or tournament division	1115	03-sep-2018	100.0