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
jeff_garrison is an African person	1111	06-jul-2018	90.9
nc_utilities_commission is a part of the government	1111	06-jul-2018	94.8
half_water is a beverage	1111	06-jul-2018	92.5
representative_elijah_cummings is a politician	1111	06-jul-2018	100.0
rushmore_cave is a cave	1111	06-jul-2018	100.0
liverpool_john_moores_university is a sports team that won the european_cup	1114	25-aug-2018	100.0
european_states is a generalization of france_france	1116	12-sep-2018	100.0
delmonico is a restaurant in the city las_vegas	1116	12-sep-2018	100.0
peleg is the parent of reu_two_hundred	1113	15-aug-2018	100.0
kuopio_cathedral is a place of worship that practices the religion of lutheran	1116	12-sep-2018	100.0