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
warner_brother_s_entertainment is a record label	1111	06-jul-2018	99.4
pecorino_con_il_pepe_cheese is a cheese	1111	06-jul-2018	97.0
n11_00_11_30 is a performance metric used by machine-learning scientists	1111	06-jul-2018	100.0
hiv__1 is a bacterium	1111	06-jul-2018	91.5
bob_stewart is a musician	1111	06-jul-2018	99.8
federal_national_mortgage_association is an organization known by the acronym fannie_mae	1111	06-jul-2018	98.4
lilli_palmer has spouse harrison	1116	12-sep-2018	93.8
philadelphia is the home city of the sports team blue_jays	1116	12-sep-2018	99.6
rbs has acquired abn_amro	1114	25-aug-2018	93.8
the_economist is a newspaper in the city new_york	1116	12-sep-2018	100.0