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
special_commission_meeting is a perception action	1111	06-jul-2018	97.9
true_mirror is an item often found in a bedroom	1111	06-jul-2018	99.8
pennsylvania_avenue_heights is a train station	1111	06-jul-2018	98.9
oakland_hyundai is an automobile manufacturer	1111	06-jul-2018	99.9
the_crab is a crustacean	1111	06-jul-2018	99.8
tiki_barber plays in the league nfl	1116	12-sep-2018	100.0
nissan is a specific automobile maker dealer in maryland	1114	25-aug-2018	96.9
columbia is a mountain in the state or province british_columbia	1116	12-sep-2018	100.0
scandinavia is a country also known as china	1111	06-jul-2018	98.4
ganden_monastery is a place of worship that practices the religion of buddhism	1116	12-sep-2018	100.0