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
amanda_griffin is a writer	1111	06-jul-2018	91.2
variegated_ornamental_grasses is a plant	1111	06-jul-2018	99.2
white_picture is form of visual art	1111	06-jul-2018	99.1
vibrio_crassostreae is a bacterium	1111	06-jul-2018	100.0
snow_sheep is an animal	1111	06-jul-2018	94.5
susan_sarandon starred in the movie witches_of_eastwick	1115	03-sep-2018	100.0
china is a country also known as egypt	1111	06-jul-2018	93.8
whale is a type of mammals	1114	25-aug-2018	99.9
england has wife diana001	1116	12-sep-2018	99.8
proust was born in paris	1116	12-sep-2018	100.0