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
animecon_uk is a convention	1111	06-jul-2018	99.8
cranberry_nut is a fruit	1111	06-jul-2018	98.8
bourg is a city	1111	06-jul-2018	99.9
robert_purdie is an Australian person	1111	06-jul-2018	99.9
ford_verona_gl_1_8i is a kind of vehicle	1111	06-jul-2018	100.0
michigan is a state that is bordered by the state north_dakota	1113	15-aug-2018	93.8
innocent_americans participated in the event result	1111	06-jul-2018	100.0
miller is an athlete who injured his/her hands	1115	03-sep-2018	100.0
edward_johnson represents the region states	1114	25-aug-2018	100.0
lemon is an agricultural product that is usually cooked with garlic	1113	15-aug-2018	99.2