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
joyful_mother is a European person	1111	06-jul-2018	100.0
mongolian_beef is a type of meat	1111	06-jul-2018	98.4
alarm_clock_program is an item often found in a bedroom	1111	06-jul-2018	99.9
iron_creek_farm is a farm	1111	06-jul-2018	99.8
pandanus_leaves is a vegetable	1111	06-jul-2018	92.1
byrds is a musician in the genre rock	1111	06-jul-2018	98.3
bed is often found in executive_rooms	1116	12-sep-2018	100.0
merrill_auditorium is a stadium or event venue located in the city portland	1116	12-sep-2018	93.8
display001 looks like fluorescent	1114	25-aug-2018	93.8
sixers is a sports team that plays against raptors	1111	06-jul-2018	99.6