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
desulfovibrio_vietnamensis is a bacterium	1111	06-jul-2018	100.0
dining_room_upstairs is a kind of room	1111	06-jul-2018	99.6
jamie_spears is a female	1111	06-jul-2018	100.0
basic_details is a scientific term	1111	06-jul-2018	100.0
yeast_cakes is a fungus	1111	06-jul-2018	93.6
national is a bank that bought deutsche	1114	25-aug-2018	100.0
uppsala is a city located in the country sweden	1116	12-sep-2018	98.4
calhoun is a person who belongs to the organization hall_of_fame	1111	06-jul-2018	93.8
stamford_brook is a park in the city central_london	1116	12-sep-2018	100.0
john_steinbeck contributed to the creative work grapes_of_wrath	1111	06-jul-2018	99.8