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
comment_india is software used by machine-learning scientists	1111	06-jul-2018	99.6
hge is a visualizable attribute	1111	06-jul-2018	90.3
yevgeny_mironov is a person	1111	06-jul-2018	99.9
bathtub_accessories is an item often found in a bathroom	1111	06-jul-2018	99.8
j_metal is a genre of music	1111	06-jul-2018	99.5
national is a bank that bought state_bank_of_indore	1114	25-aug-2018	100.0
lactation_consultants is a profession that is a kind of workers	1116	12-sep-2018	93.8
great_smoky_mountains is a mountain in the state or province north_carolina	1116	12-sep-2018	100.0
louis_cardinals is a sports team that plays the sport baseball	1116	12-sep-2018	100.0
adam_wainwright plays in the league nfl	1116	12-sep-2018	90.2