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
taser_device is a weapon	1111	06-jul-2018	98.2
nba_psp is a consumer electronic device	1111	06-jul-2018	99.4
missouri_baptist_university is a university	1111	06-jul-2018	100.0
swollen_lymph_nodes_armpit is a lymph node	1111	06-jul-2018	99.2
n6_cup_mold is a fungus	1111	06-jul-2018	93.1
blade is a newspaper in the city toledo	1116	12-sep-2018	99.8
president_obama is a politician who holds the office of secretary	1112	24-jul-2018	100.0
king_solomon has citizenship in the country israel	1114	25-aug-2018	99.7
latin is a language used in the university harvard	1116	12-sep-2018	100.0
atlantic_monthly is a company headquartered in the city new_york	1116	12-sep-2018	99.6