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
contributing_role is a visualizable thing	1111	06-jul-2018	96.6
antonina_bean is a legume	1111	06-jul-2018	98.2
post_office_employees__credit_union is a credit union	1111	06-jul-2018	100.0
sleigh_bed is an item often found in a bedroom	1111	06-jul-2018	99.9
burley_tobacco is a food	1111	06-jul-2018	97.5
brain_maps_to_mechanisms__neural_circuit_molecular_architecture occurrs in the room room_1495	1116	12-sep-2018	100.0
energysolutions_arena is related to skywest_airlines	1116	12-sep-2018	100.0
large_herds refers to more than one elk	1111	06-jul-2018	98.4
jack_morris plays the sport baseball	1116	12-sep-2018	93.7
michael_beasley plays in the league nba	1116	12-sep-2018	100.0