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
dressing_room_walls is something found in or on buildings	1111	06-jul-2018	99.0
pursuit_phase is a non-disease physiological condition	1111	06-jul-2018	94.9
sean_walton is american	1111	06-jul-2018	91.5
john_scott is a director	1111	06-jul-2018	100.0
beachwood_new_jersey is a beach	1111	06-jul-2018	100.0
jodie_foster is an actor that worked with the director neill_blomkamp	1116	12-sep-2018	100.0
viracept is a drug worked on by pfizer	1114	25-aug-2018	93.8
lebanon is the capital city of the country lebanon	1116	12-sep-2018	100.0
henry001 held the position of head	1114	25-aug-2018	98.4
barry_zito plays for the team eventual_super_bowl_champion_new_york_giants	1116	12-sep-2018	100.0