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
gauge_carbon_steel is a building material	1111	06-jul-2018	100.0
deep_external_pudendal is a nerve	1111	06-jul-2018	98.9
n1985_study is a research project	1111	06-jul-2018	97.8
particular_grain is a grain	1111	06-jul-2018	96.3
artek_recordings is a record label	1111	06-jul-2018	97.8
des_moines is the capital city of the state or province iowa	1116	12-sep-2018	100.0
losartan is a drug worked on by merck	1114	25-aug-2018	100.0
dustin_penner plays for the team kings	1116	12-sep-2018	99.6
steve001 works for newton	1112	24-jul-2018	96.9
van_dyck is a visual artist in the field of collection	1116	12-sep-2018	99.2