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
boat_lake is a trail	1111	06-jul-2018	100.0
n12951 is a ZIP code	1111	06-jul-2018	99.8
n01_06_2012 is a dataset used within the scientific field of machine learning	1111	06-jul-2018	100.0
amarnath_cave is a cave	1111	06-jul-2018	100.0
much_grass is a vegetable	1111	06-jul-2018	98.2
george_w is a U.S. politician who holds the office of president	1114	25-aug-2018	93.8
aricept is a drug worked on by pfizer	1114	25-aug-2018	93.8
joseph_conrad contributed to the creative work nostromo	1111	06-jul-2018	100.0
west_virginia hired huggins	1111	06-jul-2018	100.0
cells is a subpart of the body within human_bone_marrow	1111	06-jul-2018	99.9