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
summer_tomatoes is an agricultural product	1111	06-jul-2018	99.4
new_hampshire_state is a building	1111	06-jul-2018	92.6
john_pendleton is an author in the scientific field of machine learning	1111	06-jul-2018	100.0
odontodactylidae is a mollusk	1111	06-jul-2018	100.0
national_science_foundation_research is a part of the government	1111	06-jul-2018	100.0
children is an animal that can develop short_stature	1112	24-jul-2018	93.8
martin_truex_jr_ has spouse jeff	1116	12-sep-2018	98.4
virgin is a company that has an office in the city san_francisco	1112	24-jul-2018	100.0
the country greece uses the currency euros	1116	12-sep-2018	100.0
center is a role for players of basketball	1111	06-jul-2018	99.8