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
parmesan_cheesse is a cheese	1111	06-jul-2018	94.7
hot_fudge is a food	1111	06-jul-2018	100.0
chesterton_home is a location	1115	03-sep-2018	99.8
bcbg_max_azria_shoes is a kind of clothing	1111	06-jul-2018	100.0
tarragon_butter is a condiment	1111	06-jul-2018	99.9
general_motors is a company also known as gm	1114	25-aug-2018	100.0
gail_collins is a journalist that writes for the publication new_york_times	1113	15-aug-2018	98.4
burien is a city located in the state or province washington	1116	12-sep-2018	98.4
yugoslav_federation is a country located in the geopolitical location greece	1111	06-jul-2018	93.8
hockey is a sport with fans in the country india	1115	03-sep-2018	100.0