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
therapeutic_pain is a physiological condition	1111	06-jul-2018	93.9
royal_melbourne_zoological_gardens is a zoo	1111	06-jul-2018	99.8
holy_comforter_episcopal_church is a place of worship	1111	06-jul-2018	100.0
pierce_s_food_mart is a retail store	1111	06-jul-2018	99.5
wrhc is a radio station	1111	06-jul-2018	96.9
bothell is a city also known as seattle	1113	15-aug-2018	93.8
jason_motte is an athlete that flied out to position center	1111	06-jul-2018	100.0
houston_oilers is a sports team that won the super_bowl	1113	15-aug-2018	100.0
green_tea is an agricultural product produced in china	1111	06-jul-2018	100.0
animals is an animal that preys on spiders	1111	06-jul-2018	100.0