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
change_monitoring is a physical action	1112	24-jul-2018	97.0
vocational_nursing is an academic field	1111	06-jul-2018	100.0
assemblywoman is a kind of office held by a politician	1111	06-jul-2018	100.0
vein_graft is a part of the body	1111	06-jul-2018	99.8
joe_l__reed_acadome is a stadium or event venue	1111	06-jul-2018	96.3
micky_arison is the CEO of carnival	1116	12-sep-2018	100.0
n12_24 is the time of the event n4_5_magnitude_quake_rattles_sonoma_county	1116	12-sep-2018	100.0
ryan_fitzpatrick is an athlete who led bills	1116	12-sep-2018	93.8
modern_hebrew is the language of the country israel	1114	25-aug-2018	100.0
dragonflies is called insects	1111	06-jul-2018	100.0