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
southern_clark_s_spiny_lizard is a reptile	1111	06-jul-2018	100.0
childhood_practice is an academic field	1111	06-jul-2018	100.0
strastrom_pond is a lake	1111	06-jul-2018	100.0
door_the_light is an item often found in a hallway	1111	06-jul-2018	99.9
brookdale_community_college is a university	1111	06-jul-2018	100.0
ken_norton coaches the team usc	1116	12-sep-2018	93.8
tim_burton directed the movie batman	1115	03-sep-2018	100.0
charles_brewer is an athlete who injured his/her eyes	1114	25-aug-2018	100.0
haringey is a tourist attraction in the city central_london	1116	12-sep-2018	99.8
zvornik is a city that lies on the river drina	1112	24-jul-2018	93.8