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
hotel_godin is a tourist attraction	1111	06-jul-2018	95.9
john_phipps is a journalist	1111	06-jul-2018	100.0
exercise_induced_swollen_lymph_nodes is a lymph node	1111	06-jul-2018	99.5
dfci_ is a hospital	1111	06-jul-2018	91.7
tour_guides is a sports race	1111	06-jul-2018	100.0
older_people participated in the event result	1112	24-jul-2018	99.6
clint_eastwood contributed to the creative work gran_torino	1111	06-jul-2018	93.8
lee_boulevard is a street in the city savannah	1116	12-sep-2018	93.8
chimpanzees is an animal that eats seeds	1115	03-sep-2018	100.0
aa is a company also known as alcoa	1114	25-aug-2018	100.0