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
skin_deterioration is a physiological condition	1111	06-jul-2018	91.4
prestigious_golden_apple_award is a film festival	1111	06-jul-2018	100.0
pepperberries is an agricultural product	1111	06-jul-2018	99.1
rufous_breasted_ant_thrush is a bird	1111	06-jul-2018	100.0
spider_tortoise is an amphibian	1111	06-jul-2018	100.0
mother is the mother of john	1116	12-sep-2018	99.6
spencer is a city located in the state or province indiana	1116	12-sep-2018	99.8
alan_autry is the leader of the city fresno	1116	12-sep-2018	100.0
chicken is an animal that eats bread_crumbs	1111	06-jul-2018	100.0
football_players is a generalization of peyton_manning	1114	25-aug-2018	100.0