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
groin_lymp_nodes is a lymph node	1111	06-jul-2018	99.2
quarterly_review is a publication	1111	06-jul-2018	91.5
class_allies is a machine-learning conference	1111	06-jul-2018	94.5
dermoid_sinus is a vein	1111	06-jul-2018	98.6
steamed_buns_recipes is a recipe	1111	06-jul-2018	99.8
mbia is headquartered in the state or province new_york	1116	12-sep-2018	100.0
the companies outside_magazine and new_york compete with eachother	1111	06-jul-2018	99.9
kohala is a mountain in the state or province hawaii	1116	12-sep-2018	99.9
barbara_boxer was born in the country usa	1116	12-sep-2018	100.0
boise_state_university is a sports team also known as state_university	1111	06-jul-2018	100.0