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
sean_walton is american	1111	06-jul-2018	91.5
carcinoma_metastases is a disease	1111	06-jul-2018	91.7
kevin_nelson is an Asian person	1111	06-jul-2018	100.0
n8_5_victory is an event outcome	1111	06-jul-2018	100.0
xaghra is a city	1111	06-jul-2018	99.8
marc_anthony and jennifer_lopez are family members	1111	06-jul-2018	98.4
president_bill_clinton is a U.S. politician who is a member of the political group congress	1116	12-sep-2018	96.9
b__burgdorferi is a bacteria that causes lyme_disease	1115	03-sep-2018	93.8
belair_road is a street in the city augusta	1116	12-sep-2018	100.0
dodge is a specific automobile maker dealer in colorado	1115	03-sep-2018	93.8