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
richard_simmons is a European person	1111	06-jul-2018	100.0
_ness__cabrales_cheese is a cheese	1111	06-jul-2018	93.2
university_of_new_mexico_gallup is a university	1111	06-jul-2018	100.0
great_billy_wilder is a male	1111	06-jul-2018	90.2
neotropical_whip_snake is a reptile	1111	06-jul-2018	100.0
john_lackey is an athlete coached by vladimir_guerrero	1116	12-sep-2018	100.0
dallas_aquarium is an aquarium in the city dallas	1116	12-sep-2018	100.0
oscar_wilde wrote the book a_woman_of_no_importance	1113	15-aug-2018	100.0
the coach joey_gathright won the trophy or tournament world_series	1111	06-jul-2018	100.0
n8 is the number of people that died in the event n2009_taconic_state_parkway_crash	1116	12-sep-2018	100.0