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
karl_w__ziegler is a scientist	1111	06-jul-2018	99.9
seed_beans is a grain	1111	06-jul-2018	90.2
unde_kaili_language is a language	1111	06-jul-2018	98.7
annette_yen is an Asian person	1111	06-jul-2018	96.3
sorrento_lemons is a fruit	1111	06-jul-2018	99.0
brain_maps_to_mechanisms__neural_circuit_molecular_architecture occurrs in the building biomedical_science_tower	1116	12-sep-2018	100.0
peoples is a company that has an office in the country china	1111	06-jul-2018	99.6
commission_junction_and_linkshare is an organization known by the acronym commission_junction	1114	25-aug-2018	100.0
oxford is a city that lies on the river cherwell	1111	06-jul-2018	93.8
fiat is a specific automobile maker dealer in canada	1116	12-sep-2018	100.0