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
contemporary_pop_rock is a genre of music	1111	06-jul-2018	99.0
small_hidden_door is an item often found in a hallway	1111	06-jul-2018	99.7
spotted_alfalfa is a fruit	1111	06-jul-2018	94.0
spanish_orange is a color	1111	06-jul-2018	99.7
jessica_steen is a female	1111	06-jul-2018	100.0
dragonflies is an arthropod as well as insects also is	1111	06-jul-2018	100.0
xml_feed_tweet_seattle_mariners is a sports team also known as colorado_rockies	1113	15-aug-2018	93.8
china is a country located in the geopolitical location foreign_countries	1112	24-jul-2018	100.0
matt_schaub is an athlete that fractured his bone metatarsal_bones	1111	06-jul-2018	100.0
holly_madison is a person who has residence in the city st_helens	1116	12-sep-2018	100.0