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
alcides_escobar coaches a sports team	1111	06-jul-2018	98.0
bear_mountain_resort is a mountain range	1111	06-jul-2018	99.8
plantation_style_shutters is something found in or on buildings	1111	06-jul-2018	98.9
john_reid is a politician	1111	06-jul-2018	100.0
princeton_alumni_association is a professional organization	1111	06-jul-2018	90.7
spiders is an animal that is a kind of black_widow_spiders	1111	06-jul-2018	93.8
nady and hideki_matsui are teammates	1112	24-jul-2018	93.8
amy_winehouse is a musician in the genre soul	1113	15-aug-2018	96.9
hepatic_artery arises from left_gastric_artery	1116	12-sep-2018	100.0
bed is often found in foot_unit	1111	06-jul-2018	93.8