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
groundnut_oil is an agricultural product	1111	06-jul-2018	99.5
charles_connell is a criminal	1111	06-jul-2018	100.0
federal_creek is a river	1111	06-jul-2018	100.0
ama_council is a political organization that is not part of the government	1111	06-jul-2018	100.0
herbal_formula is a personal care product	1111	06-jul-2018	98.3
steven_spielberg directed the movie close_encounters	1115	03-sep-2018	100.0
steve001 is a person who belongs to the organization newton	1112	24-jul-2018	93.8
chastain_park is a stadium or event venue located in the city atlanta	1116	12-sep-2018	93.8
acura is a specific automobile maker dealer in philadelphia	1113	15-aug-2018	100.0
sarasota_bradenton is a generalization of temple_of_the_reclining_buddha	1114	25-aug-2018	100.0