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
washer_dryer_combo is an item often found in a bathroom	1111	06-jul-2018	99.8
dudley_zoological_gardens is an aquarium	1111	06-jul-2018	100.0
small_leaves is a vegetable	1111	06-jul-2018	97.7
icue is a conference	1111	06-jul-2018	98.6
pointe_magazine is a newspaper	1111	06-jul-2018	100.0
spider_mites is an animal that is a kind of insects	1111	06-jul-2018	99.6
rose_garden is a stadium or event venue located in the city portland	1116	12-sep-2018	100.0
lice is an animal that eats blood	1111	06-jul-2018	99.6
brain is a subpart of the body within cells	1111	06-jul-2018	100.0
clinton_white is related to english	1116	12-sep-2018	100.0