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
uncut_magazine is a publication	1111	06-jul-2018	100.0
falmouth_town_centre is a skyscraper	1111	06-jul-2018	99.9
comment_a_friend is software used by machine-learning scientists	1112	24-jul-2018	99.5
mercury_montego_engines is a kind of automobile engine	1111	06-jul-2018	100.0
material_mould is a fungus	1111	06-jul-2018	94.9
jobs is a person who moved to the state utah	1115	03-sep-2018	99.9
jose_padilha held the position of filmmaker	1111	06-jul-2018	100.0
enkhuizen is a city located in the country netherlands	1116	12-sep-2018	99.6
art_shell coaches the team nfl_oakland_raiders	1116	12-sep-2018	96.9
serug is the parent of nahor_two_hundred_years	1113	15-aug-2018	100.0