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
rotel_tomatoes is an agricultural product	1111	06-jul-2018	99.1
magnetosonic_waves is a weather phenomenon	1111	06-jul-2018	98.6
n2_972 is a programming language	1112	24-jul-2018	95.3
crumb_mixture is a visualizable thing	1111	06-jul-2018	98.0
panguitch_lake is a lake	1111	06-jul-2018	100.0
bobcats is a sports team that plays against magic	1111	06-jul-2018	100.0
toni_morrison wrote the book beloved	1111	06-jul-2018	100.0
procter___gamble is an organization known by the acronym procter___gamble_co_	1116	12-sep-2018	100.0
bt is a company that has an office in the country scotland	1114	25-aug-2018	93.8
canoe is a sport taught in the country __america	1116	12-sep-2018	100.0