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
canada_comments is software used by machine-learning scientists	1111	06-jul-2018	99.9
under_the_banner_of_heaven is a book	1111	06-jul-2018	100.0
powdered_sugar is a fruit	1111	06-jul-2018	99.3
prescription_cough_suppressants is a muscle	1111	06-jul-2018	99.5
em_poker_pot is a board game	1111	06-jul-2018	99.6
cleveland_browns hired mangini	1113	15-aug-2018	100.0
borno is a sate or province located in the country nigeria	1116	12-sep-2018	98.4
kelly_preston is related to kelly_preston	1116	12-sep-2018	100.0
tubby_smith works for minnesota	1112	24-jul-2018	99.8
wall_street_journal is a newspaper in the city new_york	1116	12-sep-2018	100.0