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
faint_orange_glow is a perception event	1111	06-jul-2018	97.9
conjunction_engineering is an area of study within the field of machine learning	1111	06-jul-2018	99.9
contact_king_county is a book	1111	06-jul-2018	91.2
_51_00 is a year	1111	06-jul-2018	100.0
rain___snow is a weather phenomenon	1111	06-jul-2018	99.5
carlos_delfino plays in the league nba	1116	12-sep-2018	100.0
mike_mcshane works for norwich	1111	06-jul-2018	93.8
michael_jordan is an expert in the machine-learning area of bayesian_inference	1112	24-jul-2018	100.0
crickets is an arthropod that feeds on insects	1114	25-aug-2018	100.0
lake_jackson is a lake in the state or province florida	1116	12-sep-2018	100.0