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
creamy_artichoke_sauce is a condiment	1111	06-jul-2018	99.8
chickadee_hill_farm is a farm	1111	06-jul-2018	99.9
landmark_credit_union is a bank	1111	06-jul-2018	100.0
paul_gagne is american	1111	06-jul-2018	91.2
dave_wallace is a Mexican person	1111	06-jul-2018	100.0
mites is a type of secondary_pests	1113	15-aug-2018	100.0
wilmington is a city located in the country usa	1116	12-sep-2018	93.8
brown_recluse is called spiders	1111	06-jul-2018	100.0
harold_meyerson is a journalist that writes for the publication washington	1113	15-aug-2018	93.8
madison_square_garden is the home venue for the sports team rangers	1116	12-sep-2018	100.0