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
oil_powder is an agricultural product	1111	06-jul-2018	99.7
digital_sound is a perception event	1111	06-jul-2018	99.0
burley_tobacco is a food	1111	06-jul-2018	97.5
pleasant_shade is a color	1111	06-jul-2018	100.0
boardwatch_magazine is a website	1111	06-jul-2018	100.0
national_gallery is a museum in the city delhi	1116	12-sep-2018	100.0
cells is a subpart of the body within way	1111	06-jul-2018	100.0
the companies youtube and media compete with eachother	1111	06-jul-2018	98.4
walter_payton plays the athletic team position running_back	1113	15-aug-2018	100.0
triangle has shape hypotenuse	1112	24-jul-2018	100.0