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
sick_computer is an item found on a table	1111	06-jul-2018	99.8
warming_farce is a physical action	1111	06-jul-2018	93.7
regulation_19 is a legislative bill	1111	06-jul-2018	91.6
tour_international is a sports race	1111	06-jul-2018	100.0
fish_pond is a trail	1111	06-jul-2018	100.0
u_s is a bank that bought union_bank	1114	25-aug-2018	100.0
tarantulas is called spiders	1111	06-jul-2018	100.0
lake_hatchineha is a lake in the state or province florida	1116	12-sep-2018	100.0
pusan is a city also known as busan	1112	24-jul-2018	93.8
michael_curry coaches in the league nba	1116	12-sep-2018	100.0