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
n2_683 is a programming language	1112	24-jul-2018	94.7
escarole_leaves is a vegetable	1111	06-jul-2018	93.2
east_matunuck_state_beach is a trail	1111	06-jul-2018	100.0
room_home is a stadium or event venue	1111	06-jul-2018	100.0
abortion_software is a tool	1111	06-jul-2018	99.4
boston is the home city of the sports team ucla_bruins_basketball	1116	12-sep-2018	100.0
shrubbery is a plant that is a kind of palm	1111	06-jul-2018	100.0
evening is an organization dissolved at the date october	1113	15-aug-2018	99.2
national_security_council is headquartered in the country us	1116	12-sep-2018	100.0
european_states is a generalization of netherlands	1116	12-sep-2018	100.0