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
chicken_breast_pieces is a type of meat	1111	06-jul-2018	98.4
i_t_e is a programming language	1111	06-jul-2018	93.7
ebay__com is a website	1111	06-jul-2018	100.0
foam_chair_bed is a kind of furniture	1111	06-jul-2018	99.7
wmal_tv is a TV station	1111	06-jul-2018	99.1
tick is called deer_tick	1116	12-sep-2018	100.0
duck is an animal that eats goat_cheese	1116	12-sep-2018	100.0
piet_mondrian is a visual artist in the field of paintings	1115	03-sep-2018	93.8
new_brunswick is a sate or province located in the country canada	1116	12-sep-2018	100.0
raccoon is an animal that preys on furbearers	1113	15-aug-2018	100.0