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
rec_room_door is an item often found in a hallway	1111	06-jul-2018	99.7
west_burlington_campus is a train station	1111	06-jul-2018	92.6
jason_streitfeld is a writer	1111	06-jul-2018	91.4
lesley_young is an actor	1111	06-jul-2018	91.2
more_european_countries is a geopolitical entity that is an organization	1111	06-jul-2018	94.5
philadelphia_athletics is a sports team that plays the sport baseball	1116	12-sep-2018	99.5
yugoslav_federation is a country located in the geopolitical location kosovo	1111	06-jul-2018	96.9
edward_johnson is a politician who holds the office of secretary	1114	25-aug-2018	99.8
uconn hired calhoun	1111	06-jul-2018	99.9
emend is a drug worked on by merck	1114	25-aug-2018	99.2