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
dorsal_nasal_artery_posterior_cerebral_artery is a nerve	1111	06-jul-2018	99.2
inflamatory_diseases is a disease	1111	06-jul-2018	91.8
larry_s_markets is a retail store	1111	06-jul-2018	99.5
inflation_report is a physical characteristic	1111	06-jul-2018	100.0
outrageous_offense ia a crime or charge	1111	06-jul-2018	100.0
dufferin_mall is a shopping mall in the city toronto	1116	12-sep-2018	100.0
david_bowie is a musician in the genre rock	1113	15-aug-2018	99.9
lake_hatchineha is a lake in the state or province florida	1116	12-sep-2018	100.0
ralph_becker is the leader of the city salt_lake	1116	12-sep-2018	100.0
mammals is an animal that eats nuts	1114	25-aug-2018	100.0