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
medicated_shampoo is a personal care product	1111	06-jul-2018	99.8
massive_snow_storm is a weather phenomenon	1111	06-jul-2018	99.2
mission_arizona is a beach	1111	06-jul-2018	92.7
karlynn_baker is an African person	1111	06-jul-2018	90.5
credit_home_financing is a shopping mall	1111	06-jul-2018	100.0
the country liberia uses the currency dollars	1116	12-sep-2018	100.0
wayne_simien is a person also known as jamaal_magloire	1115	03-sep-2018	100.0
pancake has color brown	1116	12-sep-2018	96.9
triangle has shape definition	1114	25-aug-2018	99.2
n12_51_pm is the time of the event n2011_christchurch_earthquake	1116	12-sep-2018	100.0