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
hard_disk_drives is a consumer electronic device	1111	06-jul-2018	99.9
girolamo_mazzola_bedoli is an architect	1111	06-jul-2018	100.0
marsh_lands can be a part of a landscape	1111	06-jul-2018	99.2
kim_harrison is a professor	1111	06-jul-2018	100.0
fair_hills_farms is a farm	1111	06-jul-2018	99.8
china is a country also known as nigeria	1111	06-jul-2018	93.8
encinitas is a city located in the state or province california	1116	12-sep-2018	99.8
cbs58 is a TV station in the city downtown_milwaukee	1116	12-sep-2018	100.0
columbia empties into river willamette	1112	24-jul-2018	93.8
the companies new_york and paper compete with eachother	1111	06-jul-2018	98.4