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
distal_medial_striate_artery is a nerve	1111	06-jul-2018	96.7
osler_s_nodes is a lymph node	1111	06-jul-2018	98.9
robert_buell is a criminal	1111	06-jul-2018	100.0
habitat_information is a scientific term	1111	06-jul-2018	91.4
center_autoresponder is a sports team position	1111	06-jul-2018	99.3
tim_burton directed the movie the_nightmare_before_christmas	1115	03-sep-2018	100.0
bernhard_schlink held the position of author	1116	12-sep-2018	100.0
allen_dulles and john_foster_dulles are siblings	1113	15-aug-2018	93.8
theodor_kolek is a person who has residence in the city jerusalem	1112	24-jul-2018	100.0
paris_charles_de_gaulle is a generalization of temple_of_the_reclining_buddha	1115	03-sep-2018	100.0