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
bathroom_paper_towel_holder is an item often found in a bathroom	1111	06-jul-2018	99.7
overservileness is a physical characteristic	1112	24-jul-2018	100.0
kumarakom_hotels is a park	1111	06-jul-2018	90.9
norfolk_city is a train station	1111	06-jul-2018	100.0
poker_bonuses is a cardgame	1111	06-jul-2018	99.8
o_j__mayo plays in the league nba	1116	12-sep-2018	100.0
military_park is a stadium or event venue located in the city indianapolis	1116	12-sep-2018	93.8
doctors_without_borders is an organization also known as medecins_sans_frontieres	1111	06-jul-2018	100.0
jarrod_saltalamacchia and varitek are teammates	1112	24-jul-2018	93.8
laurence_maroney plays the sport football	1116	12-sep-2018	90.7