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
wonderful_work is a hobby	1111	06-jul-2018	99.8
find_out_about_wikipedia is a bone	1115	03-sep-2018	92.3
muscatine_gmc is an automobile manufacturer	1111	06-jul-2018	95.2
lemon_cookie is a baked good	1111	06-jul-2018	100.0
little_nervousness is an emotion	1111	06-jul-2018	96.9
arachnids is called opiliones	1111	06-jul-2018	100.0
webex is a company in the economic sector of internet	1114	25-aug-2018	100.0
wsm is a radio station in the city nashville	1116	12-sep-2018	99.7
national_broadcasting_corporation is an organization known by the acronym nbc_news	1116	12-sep-2018	100.0
w_bush represents the region us	1115	03-sep-2018	100.0