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
interpretive_programming_language is a programming language	1111	06-jul-2018	94.2
project_quality is a character trait	1111	06-jul-2018	99.2
tertians is an ethnic group	1111	06-jul-2018	94.7
great_chicken is a type of meat	1111	06-jul-2018	100.0
wbfx is a radio station	1111	06-jul-2018	100.0
suny_geneseo is a sports team that plays in the league international	1116	12-sep-2018	93.8
the companies outside_magazine and new_york compete with eachother	1111	06-jul-2018	99.9
blanchard is a city located in the state or province oklahoma	1116	12-sep-2018	93.8
middlesex_turnpike is a street in the city bedford	1116	12-sep-2018	100.0
shaquille_oneal is an athlete also known as james_posey	1116	12-sep-2018	100.0