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
remedial_investigation_and_feasibility_study is a research project	1111	06-jul-2018	99.4
plantar_cuneocuboid_ligament is a vein	1111	06-jul-2018	99.2
citizens_certain_rights is a socio-political term	1111	06-jul-2018	95.6
certain_diesel is a refinery product	1111	06-jul-2018	94.1
collins_zoo is an aquarium	1111	06-jul-2018	100.0
louise_story is a journalist that writes for the publication new_york_times	1111	06-jul-2018	98.4
rocky_mountain is a mountain in the state or province colorado	1116	12-sep-2018	100.0
holey_grail___the_mechanism_of_transport_through_the_nuclear_pore_of_cells occurrs in the room conference_room	1116	12-sep-2018	100.0
blanton_museum_of_art is a museum in the city austin	1116	12-sep-2018	100.0
commision_junction is an organization known by the acronym commission_junction_and_linkshare	1114	25-aug-2018	100.0