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
system_image_file is a video game system	1111	06-jul-2018	96.9
bill_lutz is a journalist	1111	06-jul-2018	97.5
pectineal_muscle is a muscle	1111	06-jul-2018	99.3
geography_magazines is a kind of media	1111	06-jul-2018	99.1
redwood_tree is a plant	1111	06-jul-2018	99.3
flowers is an agricultural product produced in hong_kong	1114	25-aug-2018	100.0
lot and abraham are siblings	1112	24-jul-2018	93.8
business is an academic program at the university southern_university	1115	03-sep-2018	93.8
large_herds is a generalization of antelope	1111	06-jul-2018	100.0
boating is a sport with fans in the country __america	1116	12-sep-2018	99.8