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
gil_hanse is an athlete	1111	06-jul-2018	97.3
del_valle_restaurant is a restaurant	1111	06-jul-2018	100.0
voles is a vertebrate	1112	24-jul-2018	91.6
inguinal_ligament is a vein	1111	06-jul-2018	96.2
apricot_cream_cheese is a cheese	1111	06-jul-2018	94.8
nancy001 graduated from college	1112	24-jul-2018	100.0
chairs is often found in standard	1114	25-aug-2018	99.2
keith_richards is a musician who plays the electric_guitar	1114	25-aug-2018	100.0
commonwealth_countries is a generalization of canada	1116	12-sep-2018	93.8
abn_amro is a bank in netherlands	1114	25-aug-2018	100.0