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
osler_s_nodes is a lymph node	1111	06-jul-2018	98.9
onion___celery is a vegetable	1111	06-jul-2018	95.5
skiing_enthusiasts is a hobby	1111	06-jul-2018	90.6
naked_stars is a geometric shape	1111	06-jul-2018	92.8
lower_limb_veins is a part of the body	1111	06-jul-2018	98.6
wandsworth is a park in the city central_london	1116	12-sep-2018	100.0
adelaide is the capital city of the state or province south_australia	1116	12-sep-2018	100.0
bud_norris plays the sport baseball	1116	12-sep-2018	100.0
ray_charles is a musician who plays the piano	1113	15-aug-2018	100.0
wpln is a radio station in the city nashville	1116	12-sep-2018	93.8