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
jon_anderson is a musical artist	1111	06-jul-2018	99.0
contact_publicist is a book	1111	06-jul-2018	97.6
chalimo is a musical instrument	1111	06-jul-2018	93.8
practicetexas is a non-sports, non-electronic game	1111	06-jul-2018	90.9
st___petersburg_russia is a visualizable scene	1111	06-jul-2018	99.1
hornepayne is a city located in the state or province ontario	1116	12-sep-2018	100.0
intron_a is a drug worked on by merck	1114	25-aug-2018	96.9
cells is a subpart of the body within calf	1111	06-jul-2018	93.8
chhattisgarh is a sate or province located in the country india	1116	12-sep-2018	100.0
sergei_prokofiev is a musician who plays the piano	1116	12-sep-2018	93.8