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
phone_c is an item found on a table	1111	06-jul-2018	92.4
physical_healing is a physical action	1111	06-jul-2018	93.0
finnegans_summerfest is a music festival	1111	06-jul-2018	100.0
african_coconut_crab is a crustacean	1111	06-jul-2018	99.4
bob_mackie is a North American person	1111	06-jul-2018	91.2
master_p was born in the city orleans	1116	12-sep-2018	100.0
spinach is related to china	1111	06-jul-2018	100.0
bruno_bettelheim died in the state or province colorado	1116	12-sep-2018	100.0
mary and god_the_father are family members	1111	06-jul-2018	98.4
james has spouse lisa001	1116	12-sep-2018	93.8