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
bixby_creek_arch_bridge is a bridge	1111	06-jul-2018	97.1
creem_magazine is a newspaper	1111	06-jul-2018	100.0
radio_orient is an item often found in a bedroom	1111	06-jul-2018	99.8
a_friend_of_the_earth is a book	1111	06-jul-2018	100.0
oil_herbs is an agricultural product	1111	06-jul-2018	99.2
european_nations is a generalization of norway	1116	12-sep-2018	93.8
google is taller than people	1116	12-sep-2018	96.9
kake is a TV station in the city wichita	1116	12-sep-2018	100.0
varitek and j_d__drew001 are teammates	1112	24-jul-2018	93.8
waec is a radio station in the city atlanta	1116	12-sep-2018	93.8