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
ringtone_mouse is an item found on a table	1111	06-jul-2018	99.7
prescription_iressa is a muscle	1111	06-jul-2018	94.5
wind_tower_1 is a skyscraper	1111	06-jul-2018	100.0
torun is a geopolitical entity that is an organization	1111	06-jul-2018	94.4
cindy_welch is a professor	1111	06-jul-2018	91.0
varitek and j_d__drew001 are teammates	1112	24-jul-2018	93.8
black_widow_spiders is a synonym for spiders	1111	06-jul-2018	98.4
wdiv is a TV station in the city detroit	1116	12-sep-2018	100.0
steve001 is an athlete who injured his/her eye	1112	24-jul-2018	93.8
kimora_lee_simmons has husband russell_simmons	1116	12-sep-2018	100.0