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
pharmacy_computer is an item found on a table	1111	06-jul-2018	100.0
tile_bathroom_floor is an item often found in a hallway	1111	06-jul-2018	99.6
reply_thanks is software used by machine-learning scientists	1111	06-jul-2018	99.8
natural_light_photography is form of visual art	1111	06-jul-2018	99.1
zoocobia_children_s_fun_zoo is an aquarium	1111	06-jul-2018	100.0
hilgard_house_westwood_village is a hotel in the city los_angeles_ca	1116	12-sep-2018	100.0
the home stadium of joe_tinker is wrigley_field	1116	12-sep-2018	100.0
tournament is a sports game that took place on the date n2002	1116	12-sep-2018	100.0
matt_moore plays in the league nfl	1116	12-sep-2018	94.7
mike_matheny plays the sport baseball	1116	12-sep-2018	100.0