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
dogwood_leaves is a vegetable	1111	06-jul-2018	92.8
metal_beds_complete is a kind of furniture	1111	06-jul-2018	99.7
kusi_tv is a TV station	1111	06-jul-2018	99.6
city_county_credit_union_st_paul_mn is a credit union	1111	06-jul-2018	100.0
workspace_capacity is a character trait	1111	06-jul-2018	99.3
carlos_lee is a U.S. politician who holds the office of president	1116	12-sep-2018	100.0
jim_dwyer is a journalist that writes for the publication new_york_times	1113	15-aug-2018	100.0
mandarin_oriental_hyde_park is a hotel in the city central_london	1116	12-sep-2018	97.1
layers is a subpart of water	1111	06-jul-2018	93.8
large_herds refers to more than one zebra	1111	06-jul-2018	98.9