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
famous_swiss is an ethnic group	1112	24-jul-2018	93.9
school_age_students is a victim	1111	06-jul-2018	100.0
diminutive_tree is a plant	1111	06-jul-2018	99.4
plasma_membrane_calcium_transporting_atpase_3 is a protein	1111	06-jul-2018	100.0
keith_hoyng is an author in the scientific field of machine learning	1111	06-jul-2018	96.5
yum_brands has acquired taco_bell	1114	25-aug-2018	100.0
theodore_roosevelt is a politician who holds the office of vice_president	1115	03-sep-2018	93.8
supplies is a subpart of power	1111	06-jul-2018	93.8
hanoi is a city located in the country vietnam	1116	12-sep-2018	100.0
baseball is a sport played in the venue camden_yards	1116	12-sep-2018	100.0