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
devil_s_food_pound_cake is a baked good	1111	06-jul-2018	100.0
pike_gmc is an automobile manufacturer	1111	06-jul-2018	95.2
nellcor_puritan_bennett_inc is a biotech company	1111	06-jul-2018	100.0
refund_policy is a political issue	1111	06-jul-2018	99.9
fluocinolone_shampoo is a personal care product	1111	06-jul-2018	99.4
hank_williams is a person who died on the date n1953	1116	12-sep-2018	100.0
guns is a type of weapon produced in china	1111	06-jul-2018	100.0
two_men participated in the event crimes	1113	15-aug-2018	99.2
williams and dee_brown are teammates	1112	24-jul-2018	93.8
post_office is an organization known by the acronym ups_express	1116	12-sep-2018	93.8