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
michael_shea is a journalist	1111	06-jul-2018	100.0
top_bird is a vertebrate	1111	06-jul-2018	100.0
jason_streitfeld is a writer	1111	06-jul-2018	91.4
manatee_jeep is an automobile manufacturer	1111	06-jul-2018	95.1
juan_beniquez is an athlete	1111	06-jul-2018	100.0
brad_pitt is related to brad_pitt	1116	12-sep-2018	100.0
recluse is called spiders	1111	06-jul-2018	100.0
worms is an invertebrate animal that feeds on wood	1113	15-aug-2018	93.0
college is a sports team also known as dickinson_college	1111	06-jul-2018	93.8
the home stadium of kris_versteeg is wrigley_field	1116	12-sep-2018	100.0