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
improvement_process is a cognitive action	1111	06-jul-2018	100.0
guest_clinician is a job position	1111	06-jul-2018	95.2
hawes_street is a highway	1111	06-jul-2018	93.0
william_benton is an architect	1111	06-jul-2018	100.0
cord_blood_cells is a type of biological cell	1111	06-jul-2018	95.6
the country south_africa uses the currency rand	1116	12-sep-2018	100.0
china is a country also known as ukraine	1111	06-jul-2018	93.8
chen works for youtube	1111	06-jul-2018	100.0
orchestra was born in the city montreal	1116	12-sep-2018	100.0
kirk_rueter plays for the team eventual_super_bowl_champion_new_york_giants	1116	12-sep-2018	93.8