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
synovial_membrane is a vein	1111	06-jul-2018	99.2
expense_clock is an item often found in a bedroom	1111	06-jul-2018	99.9
florida_city_hotels is a building	1111	06-jul-2018	95.8
thayer_david is an actor	1111	06-jul-2018	98.9
telephone_unions is a trade union	1112	24-jul-2018	93.0
st__katherine_dock is a tourist attraction in the city central_london	1116	12-sep-2018	100.0
t_s__eliot was born in saint_louis	1116	12-sep-2018	100.0
anthem_blue_cross_blue_shield is an organization known by the acronym anthem_blue_cross	1116	12-sep-2018	100.0
children_s_hospital is a hospital in the city pittsburgh	1116	12-sep-2018	100.0
matt_schaub is an athlete that fractured his bone metatarsal_bones	1111	06-jul-2018	100.0