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
ellenton is a geopolitical entity that is an organization	1111	06-jul-2018	95.2
star_newspapers is a newspaper	1111	06-jul-2018	99.9
harvest_time_church_of_god is a religion	1111	06-jul-2018	100.0
light_feathers is a perception event	1111	06-jul-2018	96.3
beautiful_orchids is a plant	1111	06-jul-2018	99.7
del_fuegos is a musician in the genre roots	1113	15-aug-2018	93.8
railway_station is the location of the event n16_killed_in_suicide_bombing_in_russia_s_south	1113	15-aug-2018	100.0
mountaineering is a sport with fans in the country __america	1116	12-sep-2018	100.0
north_la is a city also known as los_angeles_ca	1111	06-jul-2018	98.4
sen__john_mccain is a U.S. politician endorsed by the U.S. politician bush	1113	15-aug-2018	93.8