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
flash_lighting is a perception event	1111	06-jul-2018	97.2
inconvenience_engineering is an area of study within the field of machine learning	1111	06-jul-2018	99.9
mirage_model_faucet is an item often found in a bathroom	1111	06-jul-2018	99.8
oslo_gardermoen_airport is a transportation port	1111	06-jul-2018	100.0
masters_inn is a building	1111	06-jul-2018	96.6
wsm is a radio station in the city nashville	1116	12-sep-2018	99.7
sinequan is a drug worked on by pfizer	1114	25-aug-2018	93.8
ravens is a sports team that played in title	1113	15-aug-2018	100.0
manu_ginobili is an athlete coached by gregg_popovich	1116	12-sep-2018	100.0
rugby is a sport with fans in the country samoa	1115	03-sep-2018	96.9