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
serving_plate is an item found on a table	1111	06-jul-2018	99.9
trend_weakness is a physiological condition	1111	06-jul-2018	90.8
premium_balls is sports equipment	1111	06-jul-2018	95.2
margaret_wente is a person	1111	06-jul-2018	94.1
rhodococcus_kunmingensis is a bacterium	1111	06-jul-2018	100.0
great_western is a transportation system located in the city bristol	1116	12-sep-2018	100.0
the sports team yankees was the winner of n1939_world_series	1116	12-sep-2018	100.0
spiders is a type of invertebrates	1111	06-jul-2018	100.0
system looks like display001	1112	24-jul-2018	98.4
diamondbacks is an organization also known as brewers	1112	24-jul-2018	98.4