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
ellison_onizuka is an astronaut	1111	06-jul-2018	100.0
pick_sports is a sport	1111	06-jul-2018	99.9
ichneumon_fly is an arthropod	1111	06-jul-2018	100.0
lymphectomy_lymphoidectomy is a medical procedure	1111	06-jul-2018	100.0
dealers_engineering is an area of study within the field of machine learning	1111	06-jul-2018	100.0
modern_dynamic_kidney_exchanges occurrs at the date april_16__2013l	1116	12-sep-2018	100.0
thumb is a subpart of blood	1111	06-jul-2018	96.9
bed is often found in bedroom_studio	1111	06-jul-2018	93.8
dan is a person who has attended the school college	1112	24-jul-2018	100.0
st__louis_cardinals is an organization known by the acronym louis_cardinals	1115	03-sep-2018	100.0