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
expense_clock is an item often found in a bedroom	1111	06-jul-2018	99.9
vancouver_olympic_games is an instance of the olympics	1111	06-jul-2018	95.2
steel_gray_sky is a color	1111	06-jul-2018	99.9
affiliate_websites is a criminal	1111	06-jul-2018	100.0
naruto_gekitou_ninja_taisen_4 is a video game	1111	06-jul-2018	100.0
basketball is a sport played in the venue time_warner_cable_arena	1115	03-sep-2018	100.0
cocoa is an agricultural product that is usually cooked with salt	1113	15-aug-2018	93.8
kitt_peak is a mountain in the state or province arizona	1116	12-sep-2018	96.9
kimora_lee_simmons has husband russell_simmons	1116	12-sep-2018	100.0
randy_moss coaches the team new_england_patriots	1116	12-sep-2018	96.9