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
hotel_omm is a tourist attraction	1111	06-jul-2018	94.4
old_schoolhouse_restaurant is a restaurant	1111	06-jul-2018	100.0
high_tech_arms is a weapon	1111	06-jul-2018	96.9
castor_oil_glycidyl_ether is a chemical	1111	06-jul-2018	100.0
inaugural_general_meeting is a perception action	1111	06-jul-2018	99.1
football_players is a generalization of matt_schaub	1111	06-jul-2018	100.0
pests is a type of birds	1114	25-aug-2018	100.0
howard_blume is a journalist that writes for the publication times	1112	24-jul-2018	93.8
bed is often found in bedroom_studio	1111	06-jul-2018	96.9
heritage_square_museum is a museum in the city los_angeles_ca	1116	12-sep-2018	100.0