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
freshwater_fishing is a sport	1111	06-jul-2018	99.9
lockheed_martin is an organization	1114	25-aug-2018	100.0
particular_grass is a plant	1111	06-jul-2018	99.3
n0_20_percentage_points is a machine-learning algorithm	1111	06-jul-2018	98.9
methionine_aminopeptidase_2 is a protein	1111	06-jul-2018	100.0
microsoft_office_user_specialist is a synonym for microsoft_corporation001	1111	06-jul-2018	93.8
lemon is an agricultural product that is usually cooked with garlic	1113	15-aug-2018	99.2
dawn is a person who graduated from the university state_university	1115	03-sep-2018	98.4
samuel001 and saul001 are siblings	1114	25-aug-2018	100.0
darryl_sutter coaches the team calgary_flames	1116	12-sep-2018	96.9