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
david_henderson is a musician	1111	06-jul-2018	100.0
three_viruses is a virus	1111	06-jul-2018	97.4
toilet_cabinets is a household item	1111	06-jul-2018	96.6
chief_justice_rose_bird is a judge	1111	06-jul-2018	96.7
alfred_guerrero is a monarch	1111	06-jul-2018	96.4
the country britain uses the currency pounds	1116	12-sep-2018	100.0
basketball_players is a generalization of jackie_robinson	1115	03-sep-2018	100.0
alex001 is a musician who plays the drums	1115	03-sep-2018	100.0
spadina_aquarium is an aquarium in the city toronto	1116	12-sep-2018	100.0
david_climer works for tennessean	1111	06-jul-2018	93.8