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
ring_shapes is a geometric shape	1111	06-jul-2018	90.1
concept_learning is an area of study within the field of machine learning	1112	24-jul-2018	99.8
vans_pro_shoes is a kind of clothing	1111	06-jul-2018	100.0
cotherix_inc is a biotech company	1111	06-jul-2018	100.0
first_barley is a grain	1111	06-jul-2018	94.4
vernon_gholston plays for the team new_york_jets	1116	12-sep-2018	98.4
widow is an animal that is a kind of spiders	1111	06-jul-2018	100.0
adventures is a generalization of biking	1111	06-jul-2018	100.0
pants is a clothing item to go with cloak	1111	06-jul-2018	93.8
russian is the language of the country cis_states	1112	24-jul-2018	96.9