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
widespread_recipe is a recipe	1111	06-jul-2018	99.7
wilhelm_von_humboldt is a scientist	1111	06-jul-2018	100.0
frederick_smith is a criminal	1111	06-jul-2018	100.0
foundation_chair is an item found on the floor	1111	06-jul-2018	99.8
executive_portrait_photography is form of visual art	1111	06-jul-2018	95.9
mohammed_khan died in the state or province north_west_fronteir_province	1116	12-sep-2018	100.0
folk_music is a generalization of rock	1111	06-jul-2018	93.8
ticks is called insects	1116	12-sep-2018	96.9
n12_15_minutes has color brown	1111	06-jul-2018	93.8
samsonite has acquired american_tourister	1113	15-aug-2018	93.8