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
hand_wash_soap is an item often found in a bathroom	1111	06-jul-2018	99.9
trinity_bay is a geopolitical entity that is an organization	1111	06-jul-2018	94.4
bmx_freestyle___racing is a sport	1111	06-jul-2018	100.0
westside_hospital is a hospital	1111	06-jul-2018	92.8
golden_eye_jobfish is a fish	1111	06-jul-2018	100.0
arthur_miller wrote the book death_of_a_salesman	1113	15-aug-2018	100.0
national is a bank that bought bank_of_india	1114	25-aug-2018	100.0
new_england_patriots_17_14 is headquartered in the state or province new_york	1116	12-sep-2018	93.8
marvell_semiconductor has acquired intel	1114	25-aug-2018	93.8
president_obama is a U.S. politician endorsed by the U.S. politician hillary_clinton	1112	24-jul-2018	99.8