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
redwood_tree is a plant	1111	06-jul-2018	99.3
b_f__boggan is a politician	1111	06-jul-2018	91.5
anthony_john_denison is a Canadian person	1111	06-jul-2018	100.0
alexius_komnenos is a monarch	1111	06-jul-2018	96.8
prescription_canada_canadian is a muscle	1112	24-jul-2018	99.8
drew_barrymore was born in the city los_angeles_ca	1116	12-sep-2018	100.0
north_texas_state is an organization also known as state_university	1112	24-jul-2018	93.8
trees is a plant that is a kind of red_maples	1111	06-jul-2018	100.0
spiders is an animal that preys on animals	1111	06-jul-2018	100.0
proton is a specific automobile maker dealer in uk_	1116	12-sep-2018	93.8