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
tubarao is an ethnic group	1111	06-jul-2018	90.6
dorsolateral_fissure_of_midbrain is a kind of brain tissue	1111	06-jul-2018	98.7
joyce_svitak is an African person	1111	06-jul-2018	90.9
rays_super_markets is a retail store	1111	06-jul-2018	99.5
jeremy_stewart is a European person	1111	06-jul-2018	100.0
author_j_k__rowling wrote the book harry_potter	1112	24-jul-2018	93.8
products is a tool used in the profession traders	1115	03-sep-2018	99.2
bush represents the region state001	1116	12-sep-2018	99.6
spiders is an arthropod as well as scorpions also is	1111	06-jul-2018	100.0
passavant is a hospital in the city jacksonville	1116	12-sep-2018	95.3