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
things_texas is a board game	1111	06-jul-2018	100.0
mullein_leaves is a vegetable	1111	06-jul-2018	93.9
magnificent_master_bathroom is a kind of room	1111	06-jul-2018	99.4
proposed_meeting is a perception action	1111	06-jul-2018	93.5
major_rice is a grain	1112	24-jul-2018	94.6
xpt is a transportation system located in the city sydney	1116	12-sep-2018	100.0
brain_maps_to_mechanisms__neural_circuit_molecular_architecture occurrs in the building biomedical_science_tower	1116	12-sep-2018	100.0
tux is a clothing item to go with boots	1111	06-jul-2018	93.8
clarkesville is a lake in the state or province georgia	1116	12-sep-2018	100.0
amarillo is a city located in the geopolitical location texas_tech	1113	15-aug-2018	96.9