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
phone_cloning is an item found on a table	1111	06-jul-2018	90.7
partition_software is a tool	1111	06-jul-2018	99.7
psp_battery is a consumer electronic device	1111	06-jul-2018	99.9
esopus_magazine is a magazine	1111	06-jul-2018	99.9
prescription_appearance is a muscle	1112	24-jul-2018	99.8
easyjet is a company that has an office in the city toulouse	1112	24-jul-2018	93.8
wake_forest is a sports team that plays the sport football	1116	12-sep-2018	98.4
nissan makes the automobile altima	1114	25-aug-2018	100.0
european_countries is a generalization of switzerland_switzerland	1116	12-sep-2018	100.0
canoe is a sport with fans in the country __america	1116	12-sep-2018	100.0