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
tea__oolong_tea is an agricultural product	1111	06-jul-2018	99.9
mary_steenbergen ia a celebrity	1111	06-jul-2018	90.6
la_massana is a visualizable scene	1111	06-jul-2018	99.6
front_porches is something found in or on buildings	1111	06-jul-2018	98.4
mount_gec is a mountain	1111	06-jul-2018	100.0
w__bush represents the region __america	1116	12-sep-2018	99.6
the home stadium of cristobal_huet is wrigley_field	1116	12-sep-2018	100.0
european_countries is a generalization of denmark	1116	12-sep-2018	99.9
seattle_tacoma is a generalization of temple_of_the_reclining_buddha	1114	25-aug-2018	100.0
union_memorial is a hospital in the city baltimore	1116	12-sep-2018	96.9