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_silva is an author in the scientific field of machine learning	1111	06-jul-2018	100.0
uncle_shel_s_rainy_day_sauce is a condiment	1111	06-jul-2018	99.8
daniel_nichols coaches a sports team	1111	06-jul-2018	90.5
definite_skin is a part of the body	1111	06-jul-2018	96.7
robert_perez is a criminal	1111	06-jul-2018	100.0
jo_jo_reyes plays the sport baseball	1116	12-sep-2018	99.9
divalproex is a drug worked on by abbot_laboratories	1114	25-aug-2018	100.0
vij_s_restaurant is a restaurant in the city vancouver	1116	12-sep-2018	100.0
bomb is a type of weapon produced in china	1111	06-jul-2018	100.0
metallurgical is a type of technology	1112	24-jul-2018	99.6