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
popover_pans is a household item	1111	06-jul-2018	92.3
european_english is a language	1111	06-jul-2018	99.3
rainbow_room is a kind of room	1111	06-jul-2018	99.3
vinita_oklahoma is an island	1111	06-jul-2018	96.5
university_of_maine_at_machias is a university	1111	06-jul-2018	100.0
sparks is a city located in the state or province nevada	1116	12-sep-2018	99.6
short_skirts is a clothing item to go with socks	1111	06-jul-2018	93.8
camden_yards is the home venue for the sports team baltimore_orioles	1116	12-sep-2018	100.0
ferguson is a person who graduated from the university college	1111	06-jul-2018	98.6
baseball is a sport played in the venue chase_field	1112	24-jul-2018	100.0