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
richard_j__kellso is a scientist	1111	06-jul-2018	99.9
journal_newspapers is a blog	1111	06-jul-2018	99.9
red_rock_mountain is a mountain	1111	06-jul-2018	99.9
lou_montanez is a male	1111	06-jul-2018	90.1
alexander_von_humboldt is a monarch	1111	06-jul-2018	98.8
triceps a muscle located in bodypart arms	1115	03-sep-2018	100.0
jorma_ollila is the CEO of nokia_siemens	1116	12-sep-2018	100.0
triangle has shape definition	1114	25-aug-2018	99.2
lake_barkley is a lake in the state or province kentucky	1116	12-sep-2018	100.0
bed is often found in bedroom_studio	1111	06-jul-2018	96.9