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
oval_dish is an item found in the kitchen	1111	06-jul-2018	99.4
hofstra_university is a school	1116	12-sep-2018	100.0
close_up_photography is form of visual art	1111	06-jul-2018	96.5
toy_rifles is a weapon	1111	06-jul-2018	98.4
vishy_dadsetan is a commedian	1111	06-jul-2018	90.9
states is a state or province located in the geopolitical location north_america	1111	06-jul-2018	100.0
cleveland_browns is a sports team that played in championship	1113	15-aug-2018	93.8
huntsville is a city located in the state or province texas	1116	12-sep-2018	100.0
tarantulas is a synonym for spiders	1111	06-jul-2018	93.8
animals is an animal that is a kind of cat	1112	24-jul-2018	100.0