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
outdoor_chairs is an item found on the floor	1111	06-jul-2018	99.5
city_hall_art_gallery is a museum	1111	06-jul-2018	100.0
machines_packets is a tool	1112	24-jul-2018	98.9
battle_of_kesselsdorf is a military conflict	1111	06-jul-2018	100.0
lymph_nodes_groin_photo is a lymph node	1111	06-jul-2018	98.9
belfast_zoo is a zoo in the city belfast	1116	12-sep-2018	100.0
buffalo is the home city of the sports team buffalo_sabres	1116	12-sep-2018	100.0
spiders is a type of pests	1111	06-jul-2018	100.0
microsoft was responsible for launch_of_xbox360	1115	03-sep-2018	100.0
dvd_player looks like display001	1114	25-aug-2018	93.8