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
ridge_route is a highway	1111	06-jul-2018	96.4
vineshire_road is a street	1111	06-jul-2018	100.0
striped_red_shrimp is a crustacean	1111	06-jul-2018	99.7
david_finley is a chef	1111	06-jul-2018	100.0
juan_linares is a professor	1111	06-jul-2018	91.3
anne_perry wrote the book a_christmas_promise	1111	06-jul-2018	96.9
cetirizine is a drug worked on by pfizer	1114	25-aug-2018	100.0
gregg_popovich coaches the team spurs	1116	12-sep-2018	93.8
j_t__thomas is an athlete who led n1985_chicago_bears	1116	12-sep-2018	93.8
san_francisco_state_university is a sports team that plays in the league international	1116	12-sep-2018	100.0