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
enlarged_lymph_nodes_inlungs is a lymph node	1111	06-jul-2018	99.5
potatoes_onions is an agricultural product	1111	06-jul-2018	99.3
terrence_dashon_howard is a male	1111	06-jul-2018	95.8
sony_ericsson_mobile_phone is an item found on a table	1111	06-jul-2018	91.6
yellow_dung_fly is an insect	1111	06-jul-2018	100.0
bootham_crescent is related to nestle	1114	25-aug-2018	100.0
alexander_ii has citizenship in the country russia	1113	15-aug-2018	93.8
products is a generalization of dried_beans	1112	24-jul-2018	93.8
suns is a sports team that plays against raptors	1111	06-jul-2018	99.6
issue is a subpart of air	1111	06-jul-2018	99.6