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
large_living_room_dining_area is a kind of room	1111	06-jul-2018	99.5
chalimo is a musical instrument	1111	06-jul-2018	93.8
shower_sauna is an item often found in a bathroom	1111	06-jul-2018	99.9
onion___celery is a vegetable	1111	06-jul-2018	95.5
trombidiidae is an arthropod	1111	06-jul-2018	99.4
national is a bank in greece	1114	25-aug-2018	100.0
whdh is headquartered in the city boston	1116	12-sep-2018	99.2
mike is a person who moved to the state texas	1115	03-sep-2018	98.4
rotorua is a city that lies on the river kaituna	1111	06-jul-2018	93.8
maple_view_farm is a farm in the state or province north_carolina	1116	12-sep-2018	100.0