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
immaculate_bathrooms is an office building room	1111	06-jul-2018	98.8
styrofoam_plates is an item found on a table	1111	06-jul-2018	99.7
the_akron_zoo is an aquarium	1111	06-jul-2018	100.0
al_storm is a weather phenomenon	1111	06-jul-2018	97.8
jose_reyes is american	1111	06-jul-2018	100.0
wsav_tv is a TV affiliate of the network nbc_news	1116	12-sep-2018	100.0
dravidian_language is the language of the country india	1115	03-sep-2018	93.8
lance_berkman is a person also known as fred_lynn	1111	06-jul-2018	100.0
san_francisco is a company in the economic sector of insurance	1112	24-jul-2018	98.4
larger_animals is an animal that is a kind of cats	1112	24-jul-2018	100.0