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
multiple_myeloma_patients is a disease	1111	06-jul-2018	94.6
comeys_pond is a lake	1111	06-jul-2018	100.0
light_development is a perception event	1111	06-jul-2018	93.0
postcapillary_venule is a part of the body	1111	06-jul-2018	91.5
unroasted_coffee_beans is an agricultural product	1111	06-jul-2018	100.0
white_t_shirts is a clothing item to go with pants	1111	06-jul-2018	100.0
kelly is a person who belongs to the organization state_university	1111	06-jul-2018	100.0
provera is a drug worked on by pfizer	1114	25-aug-2018	93.8
shanghai is a subpart of china	1111	06-jul-2018	99.7
cardinals_27_23 is a sports team that plays the sport football	1116	12-sep-2018	100.0