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
computational_modeling is an area of study within the field of machine learning	1111	06-jul-2018	99.9
cathy_bryant is an Asian person	1111	06-jul-2018	97.3
bisphenol_a_formaldehyde_epichlorohydrin_resin is a chemical	1111	06-jul-2018	100.0
mexican_blond_tarantula is an arachnid	1111	06-jul-2018	100.0
pierre_fran_ois_l_onard_fontaine is an architect	1111	06-jul-2018	100.0
pat_fitzgerald coaches the team northwestern	1116	12-sep-2018	99.2
william_blake is a visual artist in the field of paintings	1116	12-sep-2018	99.2
the home stadium of adrian_aucoin is wrigley_field	1116	12-sep-2018	100.0
brewers is a sports team that plays the sport baseball	1116	12-sep-2018	100.0
craig_biggio is an athlete that flied out to position center	1111	06-jul-2018	100.0