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
white_maize is a fruit	1112	24-jul-2018	99.7
day_events is a TV show	1111	06-jul-2018	100.0
small_nonstick_pan is an item found in the kitchen	1111	06-jul-2018	99.5
bath_enclosure is an item often found in a bathroom	1111	06-jul-2018	99.9
bell_home is a location	1115	03-sep-2018	99.4
webex is a company in the economic sector of internet	1114	25-aug-2018	100.0
football_players is a generalization of ronnie_brown	1111	06-jul-2018	100.0
bothell is a city located in the geopolitical location washington	1113	15-aug-2018	93.8
peter held the position of king	1116	12-sep-2018	100.0
paramount_hotel is a hotel in the city new_york	1116	12-sep-2018	100.0