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
coffee_streusel_muffins is a baked good	1111	06-jul-2018	100.0
aluminum_tubing is a building material	1111	06-jul-2018	98.8
ethanol_blended_gasoline is a refinery product	1111	06-jul-2018	100.0
ski_gloves is sports equipment	1111	06-jul-2018	96.4
san_miguel_new_mexico is an island	1111	06-jul-2018	95.8
henry001 has citizenship in the country ireland	1111	06-jul-2018	100.0
altamonte_springs is a city located in the state or province florida	1116	12-sep-2018	100.0
the sport baseball was played at n1952_world_series	1116	12-sep-2018	100.0
schiphol_airport is a generalization of temple_of_the_reclining_buddha	1114	25-aug-2018	100.0
michael_nutter is the leader of the city philadelphia	1116	12-sep-2018	100.0