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
jelly_beans__toasted_marshmallow is a kind of candy	1111	06-jul-2018	99.3
living___dining_room is a kind of room	1111	06-jul-2018	99.9
rain___snow is a weather phenomenon	1111	06-jul-2018	99.5
floor_turn is a household item	1111	06-jul-2018	91.4
sweet_wine is a wine	1111	06-jul-2018	99.3
birmingham_zoo is a zoo in the city birmingham	1116	12-sep-2018	100.0
biden is a U.S. politician who holds the office of vp	1112	24-jul-2018	100.0
cleveland_browns is a sports team that played in games	1113	15-aug-2018	100.0
dc is a city also known as texas	1113	15-aug-2018	93.8
firstgroup is headquartered in the country britain	1116	12-sep-2018	100.0