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
bullfrog_hills is a mountain range	1111	06-jul-2018	99.9
video_investments is an economic sector	1111	06-jul-2018	93.0
bath_tub_doors is something found in or on buildings	1111	06-jul-2018	98.5
ornament_shapes is a geometric shape	1111	06-jul-2018	92.8
progressiivne_rock is a genre of music	1111	06-jul-2018	99.0
deer_tick is called tick	1116	12-sep-2018	100.0
ap_news is a company headquartered in the city new_york	1116	12-sep-2018	99.5
wls is a TV station in the city chicago_south	1116	12-sep-2018	100.0
dutch is the language of the country belgium	1114	25-aug-2018	99.8
national is a company that has an office in the country panama	1114	25-aug-2018	100.0