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
crystal_bed is a household item	1111	06-jul-2018	91.6
prague_municipal_court is a part of the government	1111	06-jul-2018	94.7
naked_sand_darter is a fish	1111	06-jul-2018	100.0
the_beat_magazine is a newspaper	1111	06-jul-2018	100.0
saute_pans is an item found in the kitchen	1111	06-jul-2018	99.9
doherty_hall is a building belonging to cmu	1116	12-sep-2018	100.0
the home stadium of tomas_kopecky is wrigley_field	1116	12-sep-2018	100.0
safina is an athlete who wins grand_slam	1114	25-aug-2018	100.0
lake_winnebago is a lake in the state or province michigan	1116	12-sep-2018	98.4
nhl is headquartered in the state or province new_york	1116	12-sep-2018	100.0