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
civilizedness is an emotion	1111	06-jul-2018	95.5
aid_question is a cognitive action	1112	24-jul-2018	99.9
indian_rhinoplasty is a medical procedure	1111	06-jul-2018	100.0
tomato_leaves is an agricultural product	1111	06-jul-2018	100.0
virtual_console is a video game system	1111	06-jul-2018	98.7
henry is a politician who holds the office of president	1113	15-aug-2018	98.4
national is a bank that bought bnp_paribas	1114	25-aug-2018	100.0
ohio is a city that lies on the river great_miami	1112	24-jul-2018	100.0
boots is a clothing item to go with cloak	1111	06-jul-2018	99.9
new_york_stock_exchange is a company also known as nyse	1113	15-aug-2018	100.0