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
mandarin_salamander is an amphibian	1111	06-jul-2018	100.0
sophisticated_fuel is a refinery product	1116	12-sep-2018	98.6
military_wall_clock is an item found on a wall	1111	06-jul-2018	99.5
cerebellar_corpus is a kind of brain tissue	1111	06-jul-2018	96.4
football_clothing is a kind of clothing	1111	06-jul-2018	100.0
n6_30_a_m_ is the time of the event bus_crashes_into_idaho_power_building_in_downtown_boise	1116	12-sep-2018	100.0
oregon_ducks is a sports team that played in championship	1113	15-aug-2018	100.0
boeing hired scott_carson	1112	24-jul-2018	100.0
virginia_mason_medical_center is a hospital in the city seattle	1116	12-sep-2018	100.0
hockey is a sport played in the venue american_airlines_center	1112	24-jul-2018	100.0