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
limb_gangrene is a disease	1111	06-jul-2018	91.2
movable_partition_doors is something found in or on buildings	1111	06-jul-2018	98.8
movie_rose_red is a movie	1111	06-jul-2018	100.0
table_thing is a household item	1111	06-jul-2018	92.6
family_court_judges is a part of the government	1111	06-jul-2018	100.0
gary_payton is an athlete coached by mike_woodson	1116	12-sep-2018	100.0
becker is a person who graduated from the university state_university	1111	06-jul-2018	93.8
commission_junction is an organization known by the acronym commission_junction_and_linkshare	1114	25-aug-2018	100.0
spiders is a type of arthropods	1111	06-jul-2018	99.1
the_travelers_companies terminated the employment of jay	1114	25-aug-2018	100.0