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
barrier_islands_gazette is a blog	1111	06-jul-2018	99.9
l__obesity is a disease	1111	06-jul-2018	92.1
cavernous_nerve is a kind of brain tissue	1111	06-jul-2018	98.5
n6_07_pm is a time	1111	06-jul-2018	100.0
glass_backdrop is a household item	1111	06-jul-2018	93.8
national is a bank that bought insured	1114	25-aug-2018	100.0
large_herds refers to more than one wildebeest	1111	06-jul-2018	98.4
george_will is a journalist that writes for the publication washington	1113	15-aug-2018	93.8
cory_booker is the leader of the city newark	1116	12-sep-2018	99.9
ford is a company that produces probe	1114	25-aug-2018	100.0