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
gray_leaf_eared_mouse is a vertebrate	1111	06-jul-2018	100.0
john_lavoie is a criminal	1111	06-jul-2018	100.0
hardest_vocals_rock is a genre of music	1111	06-jul-2018	99.0
rights_education_programs is a socio-political term	1111	06-jul-2018	98.8
ringtones_cellphone is an item found on a table	1111	06-jul-2018	99.8
china is a country also known as puerto_rico	1111	06-jul-2018	93.8
la_times is a newspaper in the city los_angeles_ca	1116	12-sep-2018	100.0
club is a kind of equipment for the sport sports	1115	03-sep-2018	99.6
chad_hurley works for youtube	1111	06-jul-2018	100.0
rodham_clinton is a U.S. politician endorsed by the U.S. politician barack_obama	1113	15-aug-2018	100.0