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
stamp_collector_magazine is a magazine	1111	06-jul-2018	99.8
vanity_chest_dresser_w_mirror is an item often found in a bathroom	1111	06-jul-2018	99.8
lactobacillus_senmaizukei is a bacterium	1111	06-jul-2018	100.0
gravenhage is a visualizable scene	1111	06-jul-2018	99.6
spruce_bud_scale is an invertebrate	1111	06-jul-2018	100.0
pam_iorio is the leader of the city tampa	1116	12-sep-2018	93.8
chicken is found in chicken_farm	1112	24-jul-2018	100.0
david_cone plays for the team yankees	1116	12-sep-2018	93.8
n71 is the number of people killed in the event nigerian_bus_station_bombing_kills_71_on_edge_of_capital	1116	12-sep-2018	100.0
white is related to cloud	1116	12-sep-2018	100.0