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
cardamom_lemon_peel_muffins is a baked good	1111	06-jul-2018	100.0
six_revisions is a publication	1111	06-jul-2018	91.3
hollow_leaves is a vegetable	1111	06-jul-2018	93.5
lifescan is a biotech company	1111	06-jul-2018	95.2
mirror_clocks is an item found on a wall	1111	06-jul-2018	99.6
spiders is called scorpions	1111	06-jul-2018	100.0
gordon_beckham plays the sport baseball	1116	12-sep-2018	100.0
kiis is headquartered in the city los_angeles_ca	1116	12-sep-2018	100.0
john_marshall represents the region states	1113	15-aug-2018	100.0
the coach teemu_selanne won the trophy or tournament stanley_cup	1114	25-aug-2018	100.0