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
osler_s_nodes is a lymph node	1111	06-jul-2018	98.9
weedon_lois_priory is a place of worship	1111	06-jul-2018	100.0
cpg_avenue is a highway	1111	06-jul-2018	95.3
jacopo_ligozzi is an architect	1111	06-jul-2018	100.0
warren_redlich is a U.S. politician	1111	06-jul-2018	92.5
baldwin_lake is a lake in the state or province michigan	1116	12-sep-2018	100.0
jason_isringhausen is an athlete that flied out to position center	1111	06-jul-2018	100.0
lemon is an agricultural product that is usually cooked with salt	1113	15-aug-2018	99.2
european_countries is a generalization of russia	1116	12-sep-2018	99.9
pierce_brosnan starred in the movie thomas_crown_affair	1115	03-sep-2018	99.7