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
david_ritchey coaches a sports team	1111	06-jul-2018	91.3
robert_purdie is a professor	1111	06-jul-2018	91.1
battle_of_morava is a military conflict	1111	06-jul-2018	100.0
right_calf_muscle is a part of the body	1111	06-jul-2018	96.7
prime_grass is a plant	1111	06-jul-2018	99.2
usa is related to boston_red	1116	12-sep-2018	100.0
three is the number of people injured in the event blast_hits_bangkok	1116	12-sep-2018	100.0
steelers hired bill_cowher	1112	24-jul-2018	93.8
triceps a muscle located in bodypart upper_arm	1111	06-jul-2018	99.2
whitney is a mountain in the state or province california	1116	12-sep-2018	99.2