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
outboard_rear_seats is a household item	1111	06-jul-2018	93.5
tunkhannock_creek is a river	1111	06-jul-2018	100.0
n31_35 is a performance metric used by machine-learning scientists	1111	06-jul-2018	100.0
aluminum_lithium_alloy is a building material	1111	06-jul-2018	100.0
southern_french is a language	1111	06-jul-2018	99.4
td_garden is a tourist attraction in the city boston	1116	12-sep-2018	93.8
bed is often found in one_bedroom_cabins	1111	06-jul-2018	93.8
ralph_becker is the leader of the city salt_lake	1116	12-sep-2018	100.0
cells is a subpart of the body within liver	1111	06-jul-2018	100.0
oliver_stone starred in the movie wall_street	1111	06-jul-2018	100.0