] The world's knowledge reservoir has long since grown way
] too deep for anyone to do that, but Microsoft co-founder
] Paul Allen is throwing money into pursuing this
] extraordinarily far-out notion: Can a computer be loaded
] with the world's textbook-science knowledge, reason
] through it and then answer questions in plain English
] like a phenomenal teacher, a "Digital Aristotle"?

See http://www.projecthalo.com/ for more detail. The Phase I results in the Chemistry domain are very compelling. Check out the Project Halo Results browser to see for the examination results for three knowledge-based representation and reasoning (KRR) systems.

The browser lays out how 100 questions were encoded for each of the systems, the answer produced, and a translation of the answer back into natural language. The coolest thing are PDF images of the annotations made by the three subject matter experts (SME's) on the answers provided.