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
adam_metallopeptidase_domain is a protein	1111	06-jul-2018	100.0
josh_copeland is a North American person	1111	06-jul-2018	91.2
phone_sales is an item found on a table	1111	06-jul-2018	90.7
elblag is a state or a province	1111	06-jul-2018	96.9
sweat_potatoes is an agricultural product	1111	06-jul-2018	99.6
black_pepper is an agricultural product that is usually cooked with olives	1114	25-aug-2018	99.6
the country southwest_africa uses the currency rand	1116	12-sep-2018	100.0
eric_johnson is a musician who plays the guitar	1116	12-sep-2018	99.6
rittenhouse was born in the city philadelphia	1116	12-sep-2018	100.0
national is a bank in argentina	1114	25-aug-2018	100.0