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
number_227 is a performance metric used by machine-learning scientists	1111	06-jul-2018	100.0
lancashire_evening_post is a blog	1111	06-jul-2018	100.0
superfine_sugar is a fruit	1112	24-jul-2018	99.6
services_coordinator is a kind of office held by a politician	1111	06-jul-2018	100.0
_04 is a term used by physicists	1111	06-jul-2018	100.0
andy_roddick is an athlete who wins wimbledon	1113	15-aug-2018	98.4
father is the parent of saviour	1115	03-sep-2018	99.8
nogales is a city also known as santa_cruz	1112	24-jul-2018	93.8
furbearers is an animal that preys on raccoon	1113	15-aug-2018	100.0
football_players is a generalization of roy_williams	1116	12-sep-2018	100.0