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_paper is an office supply	1111	06-jul-2018	92.9
echinocytes is a type of biological cell	1111	06-jul-2018	97.6
university_of_chicago_graduate_school is a university	1111	06-jul-2018	100.0
john_weiss is an Australian person	1111	06-jul-2018	100.0
expense_clock is an item often found in a bedroom	1111	06-jul-2018	99.9
triceps a muscle located in bodypart arms	1115	03-sep-2018	100.0
spiders is called black_widow	1111	06-jul-2018	100.0
mauldin_auditorium is a room in the building newell_simon_hall	1116	12-sep-2018	100.0
kobe_bryant is a person who has age 30	1116	12-sep-2018	100.0
webex is a company in the economic sector of internet	1114	25-aug-2018	100.0