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
potatoes_onions is an agricultural product	1111	06-jul-2018	99.3
bath_features_dual_sinks is an item often found in a bathroom	1111	06-jul-2018	99.9
hotel_einhorn is a tourist attraction	1111	06-jul-2018	94.5
line_expatriate_health_insurance is an economic sector	1111	06-jul-2018	99.8
united_kingdom___berkshire is a country	1111	06-jul-2018	96.9
pittsburgh_tribune is a newspaper in the city pittsburgh	1116	12-sep-2018	100.0
ktxl_tv is a TV station in the city sacramento	1116	12-sep-2018	100.0
child is an animal that can develop hearing_loss	1116	12-sep-2018	96.9
cotton is an agricultural product produced in india	1115	03-sep-2018	100.0
katrina is a person who has residence in the city los_angeles_ca	1111	06-jul-2018	99.6