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
arteria_segmentalis_basalis_lateralis is an artery	1111	06-jul-2018	98.9
left_heart is a part of the body	1111	06-jul-2018	100.0
phones_brand is a household item	1111	06-jul-2018	93.9
n4_05 is a performance metric used by machine-learning scientists	1111	06-jul-2018	100.0
food_grade_soybeans is a grain	1111	06-jul-2018	91.0
tim_russert is a person who died at the age of 58	1116	12-sep-2018	100.0
richt works for georgia	1111	06-jul-2018	99.2
cali is a city located in the country colombia	1116	12-sep-2018	93.8
john_kerry belongs to the religion catholic	1116	12-sep-2018	100.0
butlers_wharf is a tourist attraction in the city central_london	1116	12-sep-2018	100.0