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
grand_hyatt_dubai_tower_4_48_0_m_12_built is a skyscraper	1111	06-jul-2018	99.9
chocolate_box_milk_dark_asst is a kind of candy	1111	06-jul-2018	96.9
cubed_butternut_squash is an agricultural product	1111	06-jul-2018	91.9
shewanella_marina is a bacterium	1111	06-jul-2018	100.0
restaurant_plates is an item found on a table	1111	06-jul-2018	99.9
the country zimbabwe uses the currency dollars	1116	12-sep-2018	99.9
conservative_party is a person who has residence in the geopolitical location new_york	1114	25-aug-2018	98.4
madhya_pradesh is a state or province located in the geopolitical location india	1115	03-sep-2018	100.0
khgi_tv is a TV affiliate of the network abc_news	1116	12-sep-2018	100.0
kassam_rockets is a type of weapon produced in israel	1114	25-aug-2018	100.0