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
email_dale is a book	1111	06-jul-2018	92.7
doggy_door is an item often found in a hallway	1111	06-jul-2018	99.9
pepe_jeans is a kind of clothing	1111	06-jul-2018	100.0
southern_new_guinea_snapping_turtle is an amphibian	1111	06-jul-2018	100.0
equity_insurance is an economic sector	1111	06-jul-2018	99.9
mount_sinai is a hospital in the city chicago_south	1116	12-sep-2018	100.0
human_powered_data_management occurrs in the room n6115	1116	12-sep-2018	100.0
nuclear_weapon is a type of weapon produced in china	1111	06-jul-2018	93.8
jonathan held the position of king	1116	12-sep-2018	96.9
screen looks like n3_	1112	24-jul-2018	99.6