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
kwik_shop is a retail store	1111	06-jul-2018	91.8
shirt_front is a kind of clothing	1111	06-jul-2018	92.9
flourless_foolproof_fabulous_chocolate_cake is a baked good	1111	06-jul-2018	100.0
deanna_russo is a commedian	1111	06-jul-2018	92.3
patti_williams is a professor	1111	06-jul-2018	90.9
black_pepper is an agricultural product that is usually cooked with chilli	1114	25-aug-2018	96.9
zvornik is a city that lies on the river drina	1112	24-jul-2018	93.8
the loosing score of n2006_orange_bowl was 23	1116	12-sep-2018	100.0
marc_chagall is a visual artist in the field of paintings	1116	12-sep-2018	99.8
curriculum_development is an academic program at the university college	1111	06-jul-2018	93.8