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
woc is a radio station	1111	06-jul-2018	96.9
bathroom_glass_countertop_faucet is an item often found in a bathroom	1111	06-jul-2018	99.7
computer_chairs is an item found on the floor	1111	06-jul-2018	100.0
creem_magazine is a newspaper	1111	06-jul-2018	100.0
widespread_fungus is a fungus	1111	06-jul-2018	99.7
william_turner is a visual artist in the field of paintings	1116	12-sep-2018	100.0
russian is a language used in the university harvard	1116	12-sep-2018	99.2
austin is the capital city of the state or province tx	1116	12-sep-2018	100.0
bug is called insects	1116	12-sep-2018	100.0
wuhan_university is a sports team that plays in the league international	1116	12-sep-2018	99.2