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
rhodopseudomonas_sulfoviridis is a bacterium	1111	06-jul-2018	100.0
community_supermarkets is a retail store	1111	06-jul-2018	99.4
stirfry_sauce_recipes is a recipe	1111	06-jul-2018	99.7
christopher_rydell is a director	1111	06-jul-2018	100.0
seal_populations is an animal	1112	24-jul-2018	90.3
paul_simon is a musician in the genre pop	1113	15-aug-2018	100.0
business is a type of management	1114	25-aug-2018	100.0
george_allen is related to university_of_michigan	1116	12-sep-2018	100.0
the coach darren_mcfadden won the trophy or tournament super_bowl	1115	03-sep-2018	100.0
peppers is an agricultural product that is usually cooked with lemon	1113	15-aug-2018	96.9