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
charcot_marie_tooth_disease_type_4b1 is a physiological condition	1111	06-jul-2018	99.7
msn_hotmail is a website	1111	06-jul-2018	100.0
caraway_tea is a beverage	1111	06-jul-2018	99.9
samantha_ward is an actor	1111	06-jul-2018	91.0
bobby_farrelly is a director	1111	06-jul-2018	99.2
john_mcenroe is an athlete who wins wimbledon	1115	03-sep-2018	98.4
heritage_farms is a farm in the state or province ohio	1116	12-sep-2018	100.0
stephen_labaton is a journalist that writes for the publication times	1112	24-jul-2018	98.4
kendall_hunter and receiver_dez_bryant are teammates	1111	06-jul-2018	93.8
jeff_mathis is an athlete that flied out to position center	1111	06-jul-2018	100.0