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
scrapbook_publications is a kind of media	1111	06-jul-2018	99.4
trinidad_mahogany_brown_tarantula is an arachnid	1111	06-jul-2018	100.0
duodenal_ulcers is a disease	1111	06-jul-2018	100.0
table_placemat is an item found on a table	1111	06-jul-2018	99.6
whit is a radio station	1111	06-jul-2018	96.9
st___luke_s is a hospital in the city kansas_city	1116	12-sep-2018	96.9
carlos_santana has been charged with murder	1116	12-sep-2018	100.0
ark and mary are family members	1113	15-aug-2018	93.8
white_beans is an agricultural product that is usually cooked with pepper	1112	24-jul-2018	100.0
kroq is a radio station in the city los_angeles_ca	1116	12-sep-2018	100.0