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
disease_persons is a physiological condition	1111	06-jul-2018	90.7
hereford_shopping_district_cathedral is a place of worship	1112	24-jul-2018	99.8
alexander_ovechkin is a person	1111	06-jul-2018	100.0
lesotho___maseru is a country	1111	06-jul-2018	98.4
causes_enlarged_inguinal_lymph_nodes is a lymph node	1111	06-jul-2018	99.3
livan_hernandez is an athlete that flied out to position center	1111	06-jul-2018	100.0
great_lakes_aquarium is an aquarium in the city duluth	1116	12-sep-2018	100.0
vij_s_restaurant is a restaurant in the city vancouver	1116	12-sep-2018	100.0
lynn is a person who moved to the state california	1115	03-sep-2018	99.8
birds is an animal that eats juicy_fruits	1114	25-aug-2018	100.0