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
acute_sinus_infection is a disease	1111	06-jul-2018	90.8
movie_possessed_by_the_night is a movie	1111	06-jul-2018	100.0
p_anisyl_alcohol is a chemical	1111	06-jul-2018	100.0
mary_woronov is a female	1111	06-jul-2018	100.0
n2012_ncaa_tournament is a sports game	1111	06-jul-2018	99.8
turnham_green is a park in the city central_london	1116	12-sep-2018	100.0
management_information is a type of science	1113	15-aug-2018	99.9
cleveland_hopkins is an airport in the city cleveland	1116	12-sep-2018	100.0
hedo_turkoglu is an athlete who led magic	1116	12-sep-2018	100.0
linda_hogan is a person who has residence in the city belleair	1115	03-sep-2018	100.0