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
ceo_search_committee is a political organization that is not part of the government	1111	06-jul-2018	100.0
alfredo_palacio is a monarch	1111	06-jul-2018	98.5
john_o_keefe is a Canadian person	1111	06-jul-2018	100.0
lilac_leafminer is an arthropod	1111	06-jul-2018	100.0
discount_drugs is a drug	1111	06-jul-2018	100.0
brussels_brussels is the capital city of the country belgium	1116	12-sep-2018	93.8
culver_city is a city located in the state or province california	1116	12-sep-2018	99.9
william_a__larned is an athlete who wins u_s__open	1116	12-sep-2018	100.0
charles_brewer is an athlete who injured his/her eyes	1114	25-aug-2018	100.0
richard_goldstone belongs to the religion jewish	1116	12-sep-2018	100.0