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
linen___towels is an item often found in a bathroom	1111	06-jul-2018	99.8
sofa_sleeping is a household item	1111	06-jul-2018	91.8
development_economics is a political issue	1111	06-jul-2018	99.9
yorkville_illinois is a beach	1111	06-jul-2018	100.0
ellen_drive is a highway	1111	06-jul-2018	93.5
sunset_park is a park in the city brooklyn	1116	12-sep-2018	98.4
ford is a company that produces tempo	1114	25-aug-2018	100.0
canadian_government is headquartered in the country u_s_	1116	12-sep-2018	100.0
guillermo_mota is an athlete that flied out to position center	1111	06-jul-2018	100.0
george_bush_jr_ is a U.S. politician endorsed by the U.S. politician gore	1113	15-aug-2018	93.8