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
_231 is a year	1111	06-jul-2018	100.0
alicia_machado is a Mexican person	1111	06-jul-2018	96.9
potassium_perchlorate is a drug	1111	06-jul-2018	100.0
closed_rhinoplasty is a medical procedure	1111	06-jul-2018	100.0
pharmacy_students is a victim	1111	06-jul-2018	100.0
desktop looks like display001	1111	06-jul-2018	99.6
greer is a city that lies on the river little_colorado	1111	06-jul-2018	93.8
starbucks_coffee_company serves decaf	1114	25-aug-2018	100.0
alexander graduated from college	1112	24-jul-2018	100.0
chevrolet is a company that produces cavalier	1114	25-aug-2018	93.8