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
twig_pruner is an arthropod	1111	06-jul-2018	97.3
peter_g__neumann is an author in the scientific field of machine learning	1111	06-jul-2018	99.9
two_whisper is a parlour game	1111	06-jul-2018	100.0
holdem_poker_tin is a cardgame	1111	06-jul-2018	99.9
stage_iv_colon is a physiological condition	1111	06-jul-2018	92.6
pepper is an agricultural product that is usually cooked with lemon	1113	15-aug-2018	100.0
sheep is an agricultural product grown in area	1113	15-aug-2018	93.8
united_states_department is an organization also known as service	1112	24-jul-2018	100.0
motorola is a company that has an office in the country usa	1114	25-aug-2018	100.0
boots is a clothing item to go with cloak	1111	06-jul-2018	99.9