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
security_issues is a political issue	1111	06-jul-2018	99.9
sodium_n_dodecanoyl_l_alaninate is a chemical	1111	06-jul-2018	100.0
complex_metabolic_disease is a physiological condition	1111	06-jul-2018	91.1
n0_90 is a performance metric used by machine-learning scientists	1111	06-jul-2018	100.0
st_sophia_cathedral is a place of worship	1111	06-jul-2018	100.0
tyco_healthcare terminated the employment of dennis_kozlowski	1112	24-jul-2018	100.0
saint_lawrence_river is a lake in the state or province ontario	1116	12-sep-2018	100.0
belichick coaches the team cleveland_browns	1116	12-sep-2018	98.4
detroit_lions is a sports team also known as former_green_bay_packers	1113	15-aug-2018	99.6
heath_ledger002 is a person who died at the age of nonneginteger:n28	1116	12-sep-2018	100.0