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
leading_natural_hair is a personal care product	1111	06-jul-2018	98.3
class_ports is a machine-learning conference	1111	06-jul-2018	95.9
polk_city_iowa is an island	1111	06-jul-2018	96.4
demonstrating is a physical action	1111	06-jul-2018	90.8
tufted_tailed_rat is a mammal	1111	06-jul-2018	100.0
tram_lines is a transportation system located in the city paris	1116	12-sep-2018	100.0
curtis_granderson and magglio_ord__ez are teammates	1112	24-jul-2018	93.8
the final score of the sports game match was gamescore:n15_11	1116	12-sep-2018	100.0
ravenscourt_park is a park in the city central_london	1116	12-sep-2018	94.3
jack_dorsey is a top member of facebook	1116	12-sep-2018	99.8