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
james_mcdonald is american	1111	06-jul-2018	100.0
n4_00 is a performance metric used by machine-learning scientists	1111	06-jul-2018	100.0
extensor_carpi_radialis_brevier_muscle is a muscle	1112	24-jul-2018	99.3
rotavirus_infections is a virus	1111	06-jul-2018	100.0
hitler_s_troops is an ethnic group	1111	06-jul-2018	91.5
bernie_mac001 is a person who died at the age of 50	1116	12-sep-2018	100.0
calista_flockhart has spouse ford	1116	12-sep-2018	98.4
soluble_fiber can cause blood_cholesterol_levels	1114	25-aug-2018	96.3
anthem_blue_cross_and_blue_shield is an organization known by the acronym anthem_blue_cross	1116	12-sep-2018	100.0
biblical_hebrew is the language of the country israel	1114	25-aug-2018	100.0