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
yellow_bellied_toad is a vertebrate	1112	24-jul-2018	100.0
robin_cohen is an author in the scientific field of machine learning	1111	06-jul-2018	99.9
chief_justice_sears is a judge	1111	06-jul-2018	97.0
medial_accessory_olive is a kind of brain tissue	1111	06-jul-2018	99.3
n15_44 is a term used by physicists	1111	06-jul-2018	100.0
germany was the looser of n2002_world_cup	1116	12-sep-2018	100.0
f__kennedy is a U.S. politician endorsed by the U.S. politician richard_m__nixon	1113	15-aug-2018	93.8
dragonflies is a type of bugs	1111	06-jul-2018	96.9
daihatsu is a specific automobile maker dealer in _uk	1116	12-sep-2018	99.9
fair_isaac is an organization known by the acronym fico	1114	25-aug-2018	99.6