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
s__shankar is a director	1111	06-jul-2018	96.7
united_citizens_association_of_macau is a political party	1111	06-jul-2018	100.0
mesh_webbed_spider is an arachnid	1112	24-jul-2018	100.0
botulinum_toxin is a chemical	1111	06-jul-2018	100.0
first_chicago_bank is a bank	1111	06-jul-2018	100.0
red_mountain is a mountain in the state or province alabama	1116	12-sep-2018	100.0
the country korea uses the currency won	1116	12-sep-2018	100.0
hanoi is the location of the event vietnamese_protests_china_oil_rig_in_disputed_sea	1116	12-sep-2018	100.0
alec_baldwin is an actor that worked with the director woody_allen	1114	25-aug-2018	100.0
steve001 is an athlete who injured his/her knee	1112	24-jul-2018	99.6