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
gorgeous_master_bathroom is a kind of room	1111	06-jul-2018	99.7
five_mortar_rounds is a weapon	1111	06-jul-2018	96.6
karen_williams is american	1111	06-jul-2018	92.5
dermoid_sinus is a vein	1111	06-jul-2018	98.6
small_jumping_spider is an arachnid	1111	06-jul-2018	100.0
johnson001 is a person who has attended the school high_school	1114	25-aug-2018	93.8
larry_i__rougle is a person who has residence in the geopolitical location utah	1116	12-sep-2018	100.0
thomas_jefferson represents the region u_s_	1116	12-sep-2018	99.2
bugs is an invertebrate animal that feeds on seeds	1115	03-sep-2018	100.0
the home stadium of sean_gallagher is wrigley_field	1116	12-sep-2018	100.0