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
class_process is a cognitive action	1111	06-jul-2018	100.0
dairy_cream is an agricultural product	1111	06-jul-2018	99.6
president_one is a profession	1111	06-jul-2018	95.9
n16_ is a performance metric used by machine-learning scientists	1111	06-jul-2018	100.0
arteria_thoracalis_interna is an artery	1111	06-jul-2018	99.2
jeff_gordon is an athlete who beat carl_edwards	1115	03-sep-2018	100.0
david_miller is a person who has residence in the geopolitical location toronto	1115	03-sep-2018	100.0
marc_chagall is a visual artist in the field of paintings	1116	12-sep-2018	99.8
staples_center is the home venue for the sports team los_angeles_clippers	1116	12-sep-2018	100.0
jeff_tweedy is a musician who is part of wilco	1116	12-sep-2018	100.0