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
population_this_study is a research project	1111	06-jul-2018	98.7
phone_ringtone_samsung_verizon is an item found on a table	1111	06-jul-2018	99.7
brain_right_brain is a kind of brain tissue	1111	06-jul-2018	98.3
same_american is an ethnic group	1111	06-jul-2018	96.0
roger_vadim is a commedian	1111	06-jul-2018	100.0
brussels_brussels is the capital city of the country belgium	1116	12-sep-2018	93.8
matt_schaub is an athlete that fractured his bone metatarsal_bones	1111	06-jul-2018	100.0
brachialis a muscle located in bodypart arms	1115	03-sep-2018	100.0
daniel has spouse kelly	1116	12-sep-2018	93.8
bugs is called dragonflies	1111	06-jul-2018	96.9