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
bean_rice is an agricultural product	1111	06-jul-2018	99.2
stubfoot_toad is an amphibian	1111	06-jul-2018	100.0
kiln_shelves is a household item	1111	06-jul-2018	99.1
monroe_park is a park	1111	06-jul-2018	93.0
comment_about is software used by machine-learning scientists	1112	24-jul-2018	99.3
master held the position of king	1116	12-sep-2018	93.8
german is a language used in the university columbia_university	1116	12-sep-2018	93.8
subaru makes the automobile subaru_legacy	1114	25-aug-2018	96.9
the sport baseball was played at alds	1116	12-sep-2018	100.0
king_george has citizenship in the country greece	1112	24-jul-2018	93.8