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
adequate_sunlight is a perception event	1111	06-jul-2018	100.0
music_education_students is a victim	1111	06-jul-2018	100.0
dining_benches is a kind of furniture	1111	06-jul-2018	99.4
two_sticks is a visualizable object	1111	06-jul-2018	98.5
owensboro_henderson is a TV station	1111	06-jul-2018	99.1
short_skirts is a clothing item to go with pants	1111	06-jul-2018	93.8
kevin_clark and paul001 are siblings	1114	25-aug-2018	93.8
cheaha_mountain is a mountain in the state or province alabama	1116	12-sep-2018	100.0
rodin is a visual artist in the field of sculpture	1115	03-sep-2018	99.6
austin_dean_coobs was born in the state or province iowa	1116	12-sep-2018	100.0