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
golden_canyon_trail is a trail	1111	06-jul-2018	100.0
individual_moulds is a fungus	1112	24-jul-2018	93.6
groin_lymp_nodes is a lymph node	1111	06-jul-2018	99.2
michael_tollin is a fashion model	1111	06-jul-2018	100.0
floor_standing_shower_tap is an item often found in a bathroom	1111	06-jul-2018	99.7
salmon is a fish that can be served with the food introduction in a meal (or dish)	1116	12-sep-2018	99.9
rogaine is a drug having the side effect side_effects	1116	12-sep-2018	93.8
current_tennessee_titans is a sports team that plays the sport football	1116	12-sep-2018	100.0
rajiv_chandrasekaran is a person who was written about in the_depository_trust___clearing_corporation__dtcc_	1116	12-sep-2018	100.0
copps_coliseum is a tourist attraction in the city hamilton	1116	12-sep-2018	100.0