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
lymph_nodes_groin_picture is a lymph node	1111	06-jul-2018	99.5
mercenaries_2___world_in_flames is a video game	1111	06-jul-2018	100.0
medicated_lotions is a personal care product	1111	06-jul-2018	98.9
fluid_power is an academic field	1111	06-jul-2018	91.2
karin_lorson is a female	1111	06-jul-2018	100.0
black_pepper is an agricultural product that is usually cooked with vinegar	1114	25-aug-2018	100.0
latin is a language used in the university harvard	1116	12-sep-2018	100.0
brussels_brussels is the capital city of the country belgium	1116	12-sep-2018	93.8
gene_clark is a musician who is part of byrds	1111	06-jul-2018	93.8
the sports team yankees was the winner of n1977_world_series	1116	12-sep-2018	100.0