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
unroasted_coffee_beans is a legume	1111	06-jul-2018	99.1
owensboro_henderson is a TV station	1111	06-jul-2018	99.1
toledo_ohio is a visualizable scene	1111	06-jul-2018	99.2
n2_7_5 is a machine-learning algorithm	1111	06-jul-2018	99.0
n1950__ is a year	1111	06-jul-2018	100.0
washington_monument is a tourist attraction in the city washington_d_c_	1116	12-sep-2018	93.8
chimpanzees is an animal that eats seeds	1115	03-sep-2018	100.0
state_s_department is an organization also known as services	1113	15-aug-2018	99.6
the country cayman_islands uses the currency dollars	1116	12-sep-2018	100.0
cnn__msnbc is a company in the economic sector of media	1112	24-jul-2018	100.0