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
steven_berry is an author in the scientific field of machine learning	1111	06-jul-2018	99.8
pompom_crab is a crustacean	1111	06-jul-2018	99.5
william_r__cunningham is a politician	1111	06-jul-2018	100.0
cuautla is a city	1111	06-jul-2018	99.8
daytona_beach_home is a location	1114	25-aug-2018	98.2
chicken is an animal that eats bread_crumbs	1111	06-jul-2018	100.0
herb_kelleher is a top member of southwest	1116	12-sep-2018	99.9
seattle_seahawks_21_10 is headquartered in the state or province new_york	1116	12-sep-2018	100.0
bob_marley is a musician in the genre reggae	1113	15-aug-2018	100.0
james held the position of king	1116	12-sep-2018	100.0