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
agreement_an_agreement is a TV show	1111	06-jul-2018	100.0
brush_painting is a hobby	1111	06-jul-2018	99.8
professional_hair_care is a personal care product	1111	06-jul-2018	96.2
milk_stout is a beverage	1111	06-jul-2018	93.5
fastest_growing_financial_crime ia a crime or charge	1111	06-jul-2018	100.0
georgia_aquarium is an aquarium in the city atlanta	1116	12-sep-2018	100.0
dutch is the language of the country aruba	1115	03-sep-2018	96.9
william_turner is a visual artist in the field of paintings	1116	12-sep-2018	100.0
baseball is a sport with fans in the country china	1111	06-jul-2018	99.2
ham is related to pig	1114	25-aug-2018	100.0