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
allied_health_professionals is a political issue	1111	06-jul-2018	99.9
unknown is an agent	1114	25-aug-2018	100.0
times_ledger is a website	1111	06-jul-2018	100.0
daddy_long_legs is an arthropod	1111	06-jul-2018	100.0
kasandra_bean is a legume	1111	06-jul-2018	98.2
madison_bumgarner plays for the team eventual_super_bowl_champion_new_york_giants	1116	12-sep-2018	99.6
basketball_players is a generalization of jackie_robinson	1115	03-sep-2018	100.0
detroit_metro_airport is a generalization of temple_of_the_reclining_buddha	1113	15-aug-2018	100.0
u_s__sen_ is a person who has residence in the geopolitical location georgia	1116	12-sep-2018	98.4
english is the language of the country south_africa	1116	12-sep-2018	100.0