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
planned_arms is a weapon	1111	06-jul-2018	97.7
lisa_snowden ia a celebrity	1111	06-jul-2018	90.5
small_leaves is a vegetable	1111	06-jul-2018	97.7
cannabis_offenses ia a crime or charge	1111	06-jul-2018	90.5
the_parahippocampal_gyrus is a kind of brain tissue	1111	06-jul-2018	96.7
Eating soluble_fiber decreases the risk of heart_disease	1114	25-aug-2018	93.8
perry_fewell coaches the team bills	1116	12-sep-2018	93.8
joe_nocera is a journalist that writes for the publication new_york_times	1113	15-aug-2018	100.0
national is a bank that bought corporation_bank	1114	25-aug-2018	100.0
oregon_ducks is a sports team that played in championship	1113	15-aug-2018	100.0