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
bed_the_whole_time is a household item	1111	06-jul-2018	91.6
organic_tree is a plant	1111	06-jul-2018	99.4
gold_disc is a visualizable attribute	1111	06-jul-2018	100.0
carbon_dioxide_molecules is a chemical	1111	06-jul-2018	100.0
falmouth_town_centre is a skyscraper	1111	06-jul-2018	99.9
u_s__postal_service is headquartered in the country us	1116	12-sep-2018	100.0
flowers is an agricultural product produced in south_africa	1116	12-sep-2018	100.0
citigroup_global_markets terminated the employment of vikram_s__pandit	1112	24-jul-2018	100.0
smooth_flower_spider is related to white	1116	12-sep-2018	100.0
vernon_gholston plays for the team new_york_jets	1116	12-sep-2018	98.4