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
radios_cool_alarm_clocks is an item often found in a bedroom	1111	06-jul-2018	99.9
vava_u_group is a geopolitical entity that is an organization	1111	06-jul-2018	94.8
comments___this_entry is software used by machine-learning scientists	1111	06-jul-2018	99.6
richard_wood is a visual artist	1111	06-jul-2018	100.0
jim_thorpe is an athlete	1111	06-jul-2018	100.0
riyadh is the capital city of the country arabia_saudita	1116	12-sep-2018	100.0
national is a bank in kenya	1114	25-aug-2018	100.0
early_childhood is an academic program at the university college	1114	25-aug-2018	100.0
samuel_j__palmisano is a top member of ibm	1116	12-sep-2018	100.0
larger_animals is an animal that preys on deer	1112	24-jul-2018	100.0