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
greater_record is a political blog	1111	06-jul-2018	99.2
thomas_hernandez is an astronaut	1111	06-jul-2018	100.0
squirrel_nests is a vertebrate	1112	24-jul-2018	93.3
topical_creams is a personal care product	1111	06-jul-2018	92.1
josh_howard is an athlete	1111	06-jul-2018	100.0
toyota is a specific automobile maker dealer in _uk	1116	12-sep-2018	100.0
short_skirts is a clothing item to go with dresses	1111	06-jul-2018	98.4
cole_hamels is an athlete that flied out to position center	1111	06-jul-2018	100.0
dr__george_tiller died in the location wichita	1116	12-sep-2018	100.0
pittsburgh_penguins is a sports team that played in three_games	1111	06-jul-2018	93.8