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
postoperative_period is a non-disease physiological condition	1111	06-jul-2018	94.0
gathering_engineering is an area of study within the field of machine learning	1111	06-jul-2018	100.0
gelston_castle_estate is a stadium or event venue	1111	06-jul-2018	92.4
banana_blues_shoes is a kind of clothing	1111	06-jul-2018	100.0
mis_asia is a publication	1111	06-jul-2018	90.7
social_room_328 is a room in the building mellon_institute	1116	12-sep-2018	100.0
box looks like digital	1114	25-aug-2018	93.8
monkeys is an animal that eats seeds	1115	03-sep-2018	100.0
wfla is a TV station in the city tampa	1116	12-sep-2018	93.8
silvestre_heerrera belongs to the ethnic group mexican	1116	12-sep-2018	100.0