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
futon_sleeper_sofa is a household item	1111	06-jul-2018	92.9
times_express is a blog	1111	06-jul-2018	100.0
top_leaves is a vegetable	1111	06-jul-2018	94.6
sand_springs_range is a mountain range	1111	06-jul-2018	99.8
clinton_arena is a stadium or event venue	1111	06-jul-2018	100.0
the sport baseball was played at nlcs	1116	12-sep-2018	100.0
australia is an organization dissolved at the date december	1115	03-sep-2018	93.8
cable looks like products	1111	06-jul-2018	93.8
nobel was born in oslo	1116	12-sep-2018	100.0
moses has brother samuel	1113	15-aug-2018	98.4