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
environmental_rights is a socio-political term	1111	06-jul-2018	100.0
stuart_anderson_s_teriyaki_sauce is a condiment	1111	06-jul-2018	99.8
egyptian_home is a location	1114	25-aug-2018	99.4
pristine_snow is a weather phenomenon	1111	06-jul-2018	98.9
zonitidae is an insect	1111	06-jul-2018	100.0
countries is a generalization of korea	1116	12-sep-2018	100.0
safina is an athlete who wins french_open	1114	25-aug-2018	100.0
larger_animals is an animal that is a kind of monkeys	1112	24-jul-2018	100.0
federal_departments is an organization also known as services	1113	15-aug-2018	93.8
state_university is a synonym for doctor	1111	06-jul-2018	99.6