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
mandarin_salamander is an amphibian	1111	06-jul-2018	100.0
ashland_community_college is a sports team	1111	06-jul-2018	100.0
federal_way_wa is a location	1115	03-sep-2018	92.4
round_cedar_table is a kind of furniture	1111	06-jul-2018	99.5
bliss_pond is a lake	1111	06-jul-2018	100.0
football is a sport with fans in the country u_s_	1116	12-sep-2018	96.9
johnson_farm is a farm in the state or province california	1116	12-sep-2018	100.0
bed is often found in private_cottage	1111	06-jul-2018	100.0
northern_trust is a company in the economic sector of public_sector	1112	24-jul-2018	96.9
vancouver_general_hospital is a hospital in the city vancouver	1116	12-sep-2018	100.0