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
mike_dobesh is a professor	1111	06-jul-2018	91.0
joshua_cribbs is an athlete	1111	06-jul-2018	97.4
ashiko is a musical instrument	1111	06-jul-2018	94.9
advantage_quality is a character trait	1111	06-jul-2018	97.1
arteria_segmentalis_superior is an artery	1111	06-jul-2018	99.4
lake_blue_ridge is a lake in the state or province georgia	1116	12-sep-2018	100.0
the coach joey_gathright won the trophy or tournament world_series	1111	06-jul-2018	100.0
the country syrian_arab_republic uses the currency pounds	1116	12-sep-2018	100.0
spiders is an arthropod as well as bugs also is	1111	06-jul-2018	99.2
yugoslav_federation is a country also known as iraq	1111	06-jul-2018	93.8