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
pneumotomy is a medical procedure	1111	06-jul-2018	100.0
o_cajcen_seafood_restaurant is a restaurant	1111	06-jul-2018	100.0
jack_benny is a commedian	1111	06-jul-2018	100.0
gray_leaf_eared_mouse is a vertebrate	1111	06-jul-2018	100.0
comment_older_posts__ is software used by machine-learning scientists	1111	06-jul-2018	99.7
juan_santamaria is a building located in the city costa_rica	1116	12-sep-2018	98.4
natural_history is a museum in the city chicago_south	1116	12-sep-2018	100.0
detroit_river is a lake in the state or province michigan	1116	12-sep-2018	97.3
paul and lord_jesus are family members	1113	15-aug-2018	93.8
john_steinbeck contributed to the creative work grapes_of_wrath	1111	06-jul-2018	99.8