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
gold_blue_topaz_earrings is a visualizable attribute	1111	06-jul-2018	91.0
babbs_supermarket is a retail store	1111	06-jul-2018	99.4
description_scheme is a programming language	1111	06-jul-2018	98.1
plate_windows is something found in or on buildings	1111	06-jul-2018	95.7
da__j_popcon is a convention	1111	06-jul-2018	99.8
andre_miller plays in the league nba	1116	12-sep-2018	100.0
bed is often found in romantic_rooms	1116	12-sep-2018	99.2
the country cuba uses the currency pesos	1116	12-sep-2018	100.0
modern_language is an academic program at the university college	1112	24-jul-2018	93.8
damascus is the capital city of the country syria	1116	12-sep-2018	100.0