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
humberto_fuentes is a North American person	1111	06-jul-2018	91.3
earlier_meeting is a perception action	1111	06-jul-2018	94.4
vinyl_benzene is a chemical	1111	06-jul-2018	100.0
grey_headed_silverbill is an animal	1112	24-jul-2018	100.0
deauville_film_festival_of_american_film is a film festival	1111	06-jul-2018	100.0
short_skirts is a clothing item to go with jeans	1111	06-jul-2018	93.8
john_steinbeck contributed to the creative work of_mice_and_men	1111	06-jul-2018	100.0
tibial_artery arises from popliteal_artery	1116	12-sep-2018	100.0
jason_isringhausen is an athlete that flied out to position center	1111	06-jul-2018	100.0
joe_pesci starred in the movie goodfellas	1114	25-aug-2018	93.8