Digital dullard [electronic science tutor]

This work presents Paul Allen's latest project to build an electronic tutor called Digital Aristotle. This project begun in 2003 as a contest, dubbed Project Halo, where three sets of high-powered researchers competed to create software that could do well on a high school advanced-placement exam in chemistry, and they all succeeded. In the second phase, the three teams will build knowledge-acquisition tools that will let Ph.D. students in physics, chemistry, and biology pass on knowledge of their subject area. The software tools they construct will have to be able to turn the classroom learning into the knowledge rules that an AI machine has to have in order to pass an advanced-placement exam. If the software can answer ordinary-language science questions, it can serve as a digital tutor for students taking science classes.