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
frann_leach is a Canadian person	1111	06-jul-2018	94.3
tropics_magazines is a kind of media	1111	06-jul-2018	99.0
elementi_grafici is a wine	1111	06-jul-2018	99.6
black_eared_sparrow_lark is a bird	1112	24-jul-2018	100.0
butter_herb_sauce is a condiment	1111	06-jul-2018	99.9
brown_recluse is an animal that is a kind of recluse_spider	1111	06-jul-2018	93.8
wls is a TV station in the city chicago_south	1116	12-sep-2018	100.0
richard_leiby is a journalist that writes for the publication washington	1113	15-aug-2018	93.8
beds is often found in style_room	1111	06-jul-2018	100.0
kit_chalcraf got married in n1995	1116	12-sep-2018	100.0