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
honey_mustard_barbeque_sauce is a condiment	1111	06-jul-2018	99.8
southern_new_guinea_snapping_turtle is an amphibian	1111	06-jul-2018	100.0
greenhouse_tomato is an agricultural product	1111	06-jul-2018	99.3
open_living_room_area is a kind of room	1111	06-jul-2018	99.7
follitropin_alfa is a drug	1111	06-jul-2018	100.0
alex_chilton is a musician who is part of big_star	1115	03-sep-2018	93.8
math__monkeys__and_the_developing_brain is part of the_cowan_young_investigator_lecture__center_for_the_neural_basis_of_cognition	1116	12-sep-2018	100.0
terry is a person who graduated from the university college	1115	03-sep-2018	100.0
japanese is spoken in the city tokyo	1113	15-aug-2018	100.0
sugar is an agricultural product produced in india	1115	03-sep-2018	100.0