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
paul_s__weitz is an astronaut	1111	06-jul-2018	100.0
north_west_wales is a county	1111	06-jul-2018	100.0
james_buchanan_brady_urological_institute is a hospital	1111	06-jul-2018	91.5
n61_57_victory is an event outcome	1111	06-jul-2018	93.0
arizona_garter_snake is a reptile	1111	06-jul-2018	100.0
n8_00_pm is the time of the event suicide_blast_near_imambargah_kills_nine__injures_50_in_peshawar	1116	12-sep-2018	100.0
european_states is a generalization of britain	1116	12-sep-2018	98.4
mcdonalds hired jack_greenberg	1111	06-jul-2018	100.0
blue_jays is a sports team that plays the sport baseball	1116	12-sep-2018	100.0
spider_mites is an arthropod as well as pests also is	1111	06-jul-2018	99.9