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
hepatitis_a_virus_cellular_receptor_1 is a protein	1111	06-jul-2018	100.0
john_thomas is a journalist	1111	06-jul-2018	100.0
n4_different_countries is a geopolitical entity that is a location	1111	06-jul-2018	92.4
metatarsal_phalangeal_joints is a bone	1113	15-aug-2018	99.9
california_foundation is a part of the government	1111	06-jul-2018	100.0
satyam_computer_services_ltd terminated the employment of ramalinga_raju	1112	24-jul-2018	100.0
jack_nicklaus_and_pete_dye is an athlete who beat gary_player	1114	25-aug-2018	100.0
flannels is a clothing item to go with hat	1111	06-jul-2018	98.4
bugs is an invertebrate animal that feeds on seeds	1115	03-sep-2018	100.0
the sport baseball was played at n1939_world_series	1116	12-sep-2018	100.0