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
cranberry_sauce is a fruit	1112	24-jul-2018	99.3
capcom_fighting_evolution_max_2008 is software	1111	06-jul-2018	100.0
newer_antidepressant_medications is an archaeon	1111	06-jul-2018	95.7
support_no_responses is software used by machine-learning scientists	1112	24-jul-2018	99.7
dodecyl_diphenyl_ether_disulphonate_solution is a chemical	1111	06-jul-2018	100.0
manhattan_mall_shopping_center is a shopping mall in the city new_york	1116	12-sep-2018	100.0
mark_sanchez is an athlete who led new_york_jets	1116	12-sep-2018	100.0
n15981 is the number of people that died in the event n2011_t_hoku_earthquake_and_tsunami	1116	12-sep-2018	100.0
medecins_sans_frontieres is an organization also known as doctors_without_borders	1111	06-jul-2018	100.0
eve and garden are family members	1111	06-jul-2018	99.6