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
karen_thatcher is a commedian	1111	06-jul-2018	90.8
hunting_jacket is a kind of clothing	1111	06-jul-2018	100.0
generic_bactroban is a product	1111	06-jul-2018	94.0
striking_photograph is form of visual art	1111	06-jul-2018	97.7
section_38 is a legislative bill	1111	06-jul-2018	100.0
large_herds is a generalization of springbok	1111	06-jul-2018	99.6
folk_music is a generalization of rock	1111	06-jul-2018	93.8
blessed_virgin is the parent of son	1111	06-jul-2018	100.0
sangre_de_cristo is a mountain in the state or province new_mexico	1116	12-sep-2018	100.0
optimizing_password_composition_policies is part of theory_lunch_seminar	1116	12-sep-2018	100.0