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
bathtub_accessories is an item often found in a bathroom	1111	06-jul-2018	99.8
room_s_door is an item often found in a hallway	1111	06-jul-2018	100.0
minority_hungarians is an ethnic group	1111	06-jul-2018	94.6
st___petersburg_russia is a visualizable scene	1111	06-jul-2018	99.1
rally_fusion__race_of_champions is a video game	1111	06-jul-2018	100.0
perth is the capital city of the state or province western_australia	1116	12-sep-2018	100.0
seville was born in pensacola	1116	12-sep-2018	94.9
patty_murray represents the region washington	1113	15-aug-2018	100.0
commuter_rail is a transportation system located in the city paris	1116	12-sep-2018	100.0
insects is a type of bug	1116	12-sep-2018	100.0