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
bernadine_bean is a fruit	1111	06-jul-2018	99.5
sweat_potatoes is an agricultural product	1111	06-jul-2018	99.6
prescription_flutter is a muscle	1111	06-jul-2018	99.8
work_clock is an item often found in a bedroom	1111	06-jul-2018	99.9
united_congregational_church is a religion	1111	06-jul-2018	100.0
tampa_bay_devil_rays is a sports team that played in series	1111	06-jul-2018	99.8
opera_house is a tourist attraction in the city sydney	1116	12-sep-2018	100.0
wool_caps is a clothing item to go with shirts	1111	06-jul-2018	93.8
hunting refers to more than one deer_hunting	1116	12-sep-2018	93.8
sony is related to psone	1114	25-aug-2018	100.0