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
lekhitic_languages is a language	1111	06-jul-2018	99.3
dynamin_2 is a protein	1111	06-jul-2018	100.0
first_woman_dean is a job position	1111	06-jul-2018	97.9
information_additional_details is a scientific term	1111	06-jul-2018	100.0
controversy_process is a cognitive action	1111	06-jul-2018	99.9
annise_parker is the leader of the city houston	1116	12-sep-2018	98.4
casino is a building located in the city las_vegas	1116	12-sep-2018	100.0
garage is a subpart of hot_water	1111	06-jul-2018	96.9
bed is often found in casita	1116	12-sep-2018	100.0
countries is a generalization of korea	1116	12-sep-2018	100.0