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
tobias_stretch is a director	1111	06-jul-2018	90.6
alfred_nicholson is a monarch	1111	06-jul-2018	96.5
white_laminae_of_cerebellum is a kind of brain tissue	1111	06-jul-2018	98.2
tp_farms is a farm	1111	06-jul-2018	99.8
barbeque_ribs_recipes is a recipe	1111	06-jul-2018	99.7
football_players is a generalization of gary_payton	1116	12-sep-2018	100.0
godfrey_reggio directed the movie koyaanisqatsi	1113	15-aug-2018	96.9
norm_coleman represents the region u_s_	1116	12-sep-2018	100.0
vinny_del_negro coaches in the league nba	1116	12-sep-2018	100.0
the country guyana uses the currency dollars	1116	12-sep-2018	100.0