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
diverse_health_conditions is a disease	1111	06-jul-2018	92.3
tanner_crab is a crustacean	1111	06-jul-2018	99.6
neil_thompson is an African person	1111	06-jul-2018	99.9
basin_sagebrush is a plant	1111	06-jul-2018	94.5
contact_the_historical_society is a visualizable object	1111	06-jul-2018	98.9
sweats is a clothing item to go with hat	1111	06-jul-2018	93.8
jason_lee is related to jason_lee	1116	12-sep-2018	100.0
salad can be served with beer	1116	12-sep-2018	93.8
massachusetts_general is a building located in the city boston	1116	12-sep-2018	96.9
bed is often found in fireplace	1114	25-aug-2018	100.0