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
true_mirror is an item often found in a bedroom	1111	06-jul-2018	99.8
icgu is a conference	1111	06-jul-2018	99.1
rights_provisions is a political issue	1111	06-jul-2018	100.0
n5_000_inhabitants is a geopolitical entity that is an organization	1111	06-jul-2018	94.7
cambridge_suites_toronto is a hotel	1111	06-jul-2018	94.5
new_orleans_arena is the home venue for the sports team hornets_basketball_livestream_29_02_2012	1116	12-sep-2018	98.4
plastic is a building feature made from the building material glass	1115	03-sep-2018	93.8
fred_lynn is a person also known as lance_berkman	1111	06-jul-2018	100.0
lamech is the parent of noah	1112	24-jul-2018	100.0
standard_mandarin is the language of the country china	1111	06-jul-2018	93.8