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
fluocinolone_shampoo is a personal care product	1111	06-jul-2018	99.4
comments_cats is software used by machine-learning scientists	1111	06-jul-2018	99.6
northern_spadefoot_toad is an amphibian	1111	06-jul-2018	100.0
butler_county is an airport	1111	06-jul-2018	100.0
jamie_spears is a female	1111	06-jul-2018	100.0
felipe_alou is the parent of moises_alou	1115	03-sep-2018	98.4
the sport baseball was played at n1969_world_series	1116	12-sep-2018	100.0
tubby_smith coaches the team uk	1116	12-sep-2018	96.9
football is a sport with fans in the country us	1115	03-sep-2018	98.4
john_steinbeck contributed to the creative work east	1111	06-jul-2018	93.8