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
eastern_pine_weevil is an insect	1111	06-jul-2018	100.0
immaculate_bathrooms is an office building room	1111	06-jul-2018	98.8
open_air_kitchen is a kind of room	1111	06-jul-2018	90.3
united_community_bank_of_north_dakota is a bank	1111	06-jul-2018	100.0
center_gun is a sports team position	1111	06-jul-2018	99.6
eve is the mother of garden001	1115	03-sep-2018	100.0
clark is a person who has attended the school state_university	1114	25-aug-2018	99.2
barry_larkin is an athlete who led reds	1116	12-sep-2018	96.9
sweats is a clothing item to go with t_shirt	1111	06-jul-2018	100.0
milos_forman directed the movie cuckoo_s_nest	1115	03-sep-2018	93.8