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
kevin_nelson is an Asian person	1111	06-jul-2018	100.0
delightful_sitting_room is a kind of room	1111	06-jul-2018	99.7
argentine_snake_necked_turtle is an amphibian	1111	06-jul-2018	100.0
realization_software is a tool	1111	06-jul-2018	99.8
red_sided_garter_snake is a vertebrate	1111	06-jul-2018	100.0
deer is an animal that eats seeds	1115	03-sep-2018	100.0
jamie_dimon is the CEO of chase	1116	12-sep-2018	100.0
vanessa_paradis has husband johnny_depp	1116	12-sep-2018	99.2
dell_inc is a company in the economic sector of computer	1113	15-aug-2018	100.0
laurence_olivier starred in the movie hamlet	1116	12-sep-2018	96.9