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
keesha_bean is a legume	1111	06-jul-2018	98.0
sinuses_and_lymph_nodes is a lymph node	1111	06-jul-2018	99.7
period_publications is a kind of media	1111	06-jul-2018	99.4
natural_resources_planner is a job position	1111	06-jul-2018	98.3
english_majors is a victim	1111	06-jul-2018	100.0
john_carpenter directed the movie the_thing	1115	03-sep-2018	99.2
sinequan is a drug worked on by pfizer	1114	25-aug-2018	93.8
richard_wagoner is the CEO of the automobile maker company gm	1116	12-sep-2018	100.0
qinghai is a sate or province located in the country china	1116	12-sep-2018	100.0
wltz is a TV affiliate of the network nbc_news	1116	12-sep-2018	100.0