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
robert_mcarthur is a writer	1111	06-jul-2018	91.2
particular_grass is a plant	1111	06-jul-2018	99.3
escambia_saab is a company	1111	06-jul-2018	95.2
paenibacillus is a bacterium	1111	06-jul-2018	96.3
income_ratio_calculator is an invertebrate	1111	06-jul-2018	99.7
russell has spouse taylor	1116	12-sep-2018	93.8
brad_lidge is an athlete who wins world_series	1114	25-aug-2018	100.0
amtrak_cascades is a transportation system located in the city seattle	1116	12-sep-2018	100.0
the country ethiopia uses the currency dollars	1116	12-sep-2018	100.0
fairleigh_dickinson_university is a sports team that plays in the league international	1116	12-sep-2018	93.8