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
woodiness is a physical characteristic	1111	06-jul-2018	100.0
cheese_chicken is a type of meat	1111	06-jul-2018	90.7
puebla_deer_mouse is a mammal	1111	06-jul-2018	100.0
diversion_magazine is a website	1111	06-jul-2018	100.0
light_grey_line is a perception event	1111	06-jul-2018	96.1
logan_international is an attraction that will be fall in city boston	1116	12-sep-2018	100.0
ayers_rock is a building located in the city sydney	1116	12-sep-2018	96.9
pacific_coliseum is a tourist attraction in the city hamilton	1116	12-sep-2018	100.0
michael_moore directed the movie bowling_for_columbine	1115	03-sep-2018	93.8
bilhah is the father of dan	1116	12-sep-2018	99.7