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
importance_process is a cognitive action	1111	06-jul-2018	99.9
meta_toluidine is a chemical	1111	06-jul-2018	100.0
limph_nodes is a lymph node	1111	06-jul-2018	99.5
wcju is a TV station	1111	06-jul-2018	99.1
judge_last_friday is a judge	1111	06-jul-2018	98.2
president_bill_clinton is a U.S. politician who holds the office of u_s__secretary	1116	12-sep-2018	96.9
steve001 is a person who belongs to the organization apple_inc	1112	24-jul-2018	100.0
daniel_descalso is an athlete who led cardinals_27_23	1116	12-sep-2018	93.8
giuliani represents the region new	1115	03-sep-2018	95.7
scorpions is an animal that is a kind of spiders	1111	06-jul-2018	93.8