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
temporary_health_insurance is an economic sector	1112	24-jul-2018	99.7
lateral_cutaneous_nerve_of_the_forearm is a nerve	1111	06-jul-2018	97.5
colored_golf_balls is sports equipment	1111	06-jul-2018	93.7
shida_kartli is a state or a province	1111	06-jul-2018	96.9
ecw_arena is a stadium or event venue	1111	06-jul-2018	100.0
starbucks_coffee_company serves decaf	1114	25-aug-2018	100.0
products is a generalization of wheat_flour	1111	06-jul-2018	99.2
monkeys is an animal that preys on larger_animals	1112	24-jul-2018	100.0
andrew_jacobs is a journalist that writes for the publication new_york_times	1112	24-jul-2018	96.9
holiday_inn is a hotel in the city new_york	1116	12-sep-2018	100.0