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
christopher_rydell is a director	1111	06-jul-2018	100.0
patti_williams is a professor	1111	06-jul-2018	90.9
hunting_spider is an arachnid	1111	06-jul-2018	100.0
charles_harris is a Mexican person	1111	06-jul-2018	100.0
the_rachael_ray_show is a TV show	1111	06-jul-2018	99.9
al_pacino starred in the movie dog_day_afternoon	1115	03-sep-2018	96.9
_ is a building located in the city las_vegas	1116	12-sep-2018	93.8
flowers is an agricultural product grown in region	1116	12-sep-2018	100.0
robert_kennedy has brother jfk	1116	12-sep-2018	100.0
loose_fitting_clothing is a clothing item to go with hat	1111	06-jul-2018	93.8