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
hives_lymph_nodes is a lymph node	1111	06-jul-2018	99.0
hiroshima_castle is a place of worship	1111	06-jul-2018	99.8
potato_yam is a visualizable thing	1111	06-jul-2018	95.8
cannabis_offenses ia a crime or charge	1111	06-jul-2018	90.5
the_city_weekly is a newspaper	1111	06-jul-2018	100.0
artillery is a type of weapon produced in israel	1114	25-aug-2018	100.0
emc has acquired rsa	1114	25-aug-2018	100.0
cole_hamels is an athlete that flied out to position center	1111	06-jul-2018	100.0
susanne_hal got married in n1995	1116	12-sep-2018	100.0
ulysses_grant is a politician who holds the office of secretary	1114	25-aug-2018	93.8