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
hair_growth_products is a personal care product	1111	06-jul-2018	97.9
environmental_protection_and_biodiversity_conservation_act is a legislative bill	1111	06-jul-2018	93.8
comment_events is software used by machine-learning scientists	1111	06-jul-2018	99.5
little_league_field is a stadium or event venue	1111	06-jul-2018	100.0
bed_two is an item often found in a bedroom	1111	06-jul-2018	99.9
american_museum is a museum in the city new_york	1116	12-sep-2018	100.0
abelson_hall is a building belonging to wsu	1116	12-sep-2018	100.0
portsmouth is a city located in the state or province rhode_island	1116	12-sep-2018	99.2
isaac has wife rebecca	1116	12-sep-2018	96.9
ski is a sport taught in the country india	1115	03-sep-2018	100.0