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
swollen_itchy_lymph_nodes is a part of the body	1111	06-jul-2018	100.0
boxwood_mite is an invertebrate	1111	06-jul-2018	100.0
hair_coloring is a personal care product	1111	06-jul-2018	99.0
ralph_snyder is a writer	1111	06-jul-2018	91.6
comment_every_year is software used by machine-learning scientists	1111	06-jul-2018	99.3
cells is a subpart of the body within development	1111	06-jul-2018	93.8
will_venable plays for the team tampa_bay_devil_rays	1116	12-sep-2018	100.0
kbcw is a company that has an office in the city san_francisco	1112	24-jul-2018	100.0
aaron_rodgers is a person also known as j_p__arencibia	1115	03-sep-2018	100.0
victoria has husband daniel	1116	12-sep-2018	96.9