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
clear_waves is a weather phenomenon	1111	06-jul-2018	98.5
norrish_creek is a river	1111	06-jul-2018	100.0
alpha_actinin_3 is a protein	1111	06-jul-2018	90.4
lesser_short_nosed_fruit_bat is a mammal	1111	06-jul-2018	100.0
chesterton_home is a location	1115	03-sep-2018	99.8
easyjet is a company that has an office in the city basel	1112	24-jul-2018	93.8
morgan_freeman is an actor that worked with the director clint_eastwood	1115	03-sep-2018	100.0
jason_marquis is an athlete that flied out to position center	1111	06-jul-2018	100.0
king_david is the father of jesus	1116	12-sep-2018	96.9
david_cho is a journalist that writes for the publication washington	1113	15-aug-2018	93.8