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
ice_glass is an item found in the kitchen	1111	06-jul-2018	99.3
elm_lake is a lake	1111	06-jul-2018	100.0
food_recipes_engineering is an area of study within the field of machine learning	1111	06-jul-2018	100.0
movie_punch_drunk_love is a movie	1111	06-jul-2018	100.0
hilton_houston_hobby_airport is a place to ski	1111	06-jul-2018	90.0
san_diego_chargers is a sports team that plays the sport football	1116	12-sep-2018	100.0
spiders is an arthropod as well as widow also is	1111	06-jul-2018	100.0
garage is often found in site	1116	12-sep-2018	93.8
black_pepper is an agricultural product that is usually cooked with spinach	1114	25-aug-2018	96.9
china is a country also known as egypt	1111	06-jul-2018	93.8