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
comments___this_entry is software used by machine-learning scientists	1111	06-jul-2018	99.6
whitish_light is a perception event	1111	06-jul-2018	96.7
taillight_assembly is an item found on a wall	1111	06-jul-2018	91.9
legal_momentum is a political organization that is not part of the government	1111	06-jul-2018	92.7
cape_pond is a lake	1111	06-jul-2018	100.0
the country jamaica uses the currency dollars	1116	12-sep-2018	100.0
greenville_spartanburg is a generalization of temple_of_the_reclining_buddha	1114	25-aug-2018	100.0
cells is a subpart of the body within development	1111	06-jul-2018	93.8
kmbc is a TV station in the city kansas_city	1116	12-sep-2018	100.0
black_pepper is an agricultural product that is usually cooked with onion	1114	25-aug-2018	100.0