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
boardwatch_magazine is a publication	1111	06-jul-2018	100.0
system_periods is a video game system	1111	06-jul-2018	98.3
tlr_2 is a protein	1111	06-jul-2018	94.6
compare_soma is a product	1111	06-jul-2018	99.9
liberian_civil_war is a terrorist organization	1111	06-jul-2018	99.3
hugh_hopper is a musician who is part of soft_machine	1114	25-aug-2018	98.4
the companies sky___telescope_magazine and new_york compete with eachother	1111	06-jul-2018	93.8
columbia is a city also known as port_clements	1111	06-jul-2018	93.8
usa is a country also known as china	1111	06-jul-2018	98.4
bugs is an invertebrate animal that feeds on seeds	1115	03-sep-2018	100.0