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
troy_wisconsin is a beach	1111	06-jul-2018	91.6
right_colic_lymph_nodes is a lymph node	1111	06-jul-2018	99.2
n9_00_am_5_30_pm is a time	1112	24-jul-2018	100.0
table_repair is an item found on the floor	1111	06-jul-2018	99.8
burrino_farcito_con_soppressata_cheese is a cheese	1111	06-jul-2018	96.3
the home stadium of brian_campbell is wrigley_field	1116	12-sep-2018	100.0
robert_heinlein contributed to the creative work stranger_in_a_strange_land	1112	24-jul-2018	99.6
mites is a type of arachnids	1111	06-jul-2018	98.4
secondary_pests is called mites	1116	12-sep-2018	99.6
child is an animal that can develop chicken_pox	1116	12-sep-2018	100.0