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
black_capped_squirrel_monkey is a mammal	1111	06-jul-2018	100.0
open_screen_door is an item often found in a hallway	1111	06-jul-2018	100.0
carlos_carrasco is an athlete	1111	06-jul-2018	100.0
movie_the_last_of_the_mohicans is a movie	1111	06-jul-2018	100.0
indipop is a genre of music	1111	06-jul-2018	99.6
flannels is a clothing item to go with jacket	1111	06-jul-2018	93.8
michelle has husband barack_obama	1116	12-sep-2018	99.2
tropicana_field is the home venue for the sports team tampa_bay_devil_rays	1116	12-sep-2018	100.0
insects is an arthropod as well as spider_mites also is	1111	06-jul-2018	96.9
greg_golson is an athlete who led yankees	1116	12-sep-2018	96.9