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
enzyme_tryptophan_hydroxylase is a protein	1111	06-jul-2018	94.7
billie_johnson is a politician	1111	06-jul-2018	90.9
sears_retail_stores is a retail store	1111	06-jul-2018	99.8
jewelled_spider is an arachnid	1111	06-jul-2018	100.0
n4_00_5_00 is a time	1111	06-jul-2018	100.0
nicoderm_cq_patch is expected to come to market on august	1116	12-sep-2018	100.0
phil_knight created the organziation nike	1112	24-jul-2018	100.0
national is a bank that bought standard_chartered	1114	25-aug-2018	100.0
san_francisco is a company in the economic sector of insurance	1112	24-jul-2018	98.4
the country zimbabwe uses the currency dollars	1116	12-sep-2018	99.9