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
cultural_manager is a profession	1111	06-jul-2018	96.0
ripe_tomatoes is a vegetable	1111	06-jul-2018	95.1
multi_function_massage_chair is an item found on the floor	1111	06-jul-2018	99.8
steel_fabrications is a building material	1111	06-jul-2018	94.7
_860 is a year	1111	06-jul-2018	100.0
hard is a generalization of rock	1112	24-jul-2018	93.8
south_farm is a farm in the state or province ohio	1116	12-sep-2018	100.0
gene_clark is a musician who is part of byrds	1111	06-jul-2018	93.8
lancome is headquartered in the country france_france	1116	12-sep-2018	100.0
johnson001 is a person who has attended the school high_school	1114	25-aug-2018	93.8