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
the_sufaries is a musical artist	1111	06-jul-2018	96.3
stephanie_wilkins is an actor	1111	06-jul-2018	91.4
fresh_dough is a baked good	1111	06-jul-2018	91.2
jeff_nelson is an athlete	1111	06-jul-2018	100.0
booker_arkansas is a beach	1111	06-jul-2018	99.3
recluse_spider is an arthropod as well as recluse also is	1111	06-jul-2018	100.0
anna_nicole_smith is a person who died at the age of 39	1116	12-sep-2018	100.0
jason_marquis is an athlete that flied out to position center	1111	06-jul-2018	100.0
the_nation is headquartered in the city new_york	1116	12-sep-2018	100.0
tom_s_restaurant is a restaurant in the city los_angeles_ca	1116	12-sep-2018	100.0