Prof's Teaching Assistant Isn’t Human

Pressor Ashok Goel Tech developed an artificially intelligent teaching assistantto help handlethe enormous number student questions in the online class， Knowledge-BasedArtificial Intelligence.

Thisonline course is a core requirement Tech'sonline Master Science in Computer Science program.

Pressor Goel already had eight teachingassistants，but thatwasn'tenough to deal with the overwhelming number daily questions from students.

Many students drop out online courses because the lack teaching support.When students feel isolated or confused and reach""outwith questions that go unanswered，their motivation to continue begins to fade.

佐治亞理工學院的阿肖克·戈爾（AshokGoel）教授開發了一個人工智能助教，幫助處理在線課程——基于知識的人工智能——中大量的學生提問。

這一在線課程是佐治亞理工學院計算機科學在線碩士課程的核心必修課，

盡管戈爾教授已經有了八位助教，但是這仍然不足以應對學生日常提出的大量問題。

由于缺少教學輔導，很多學生會選擇退出在線課程。當學生們感到困惑無助，提出問題得不到解答時，他們繼續學習的動力就會減少。

Pressor Goel decided to do something to remedy this situation and his solution was to create a virtual assistant named Jill Watson， whichisbasedontheIBMWatsonplatform.

戈爾教授決定想辦法來改變這一狀況，他的解決方法是基于IBMWatson平臺創建一個名為吉爾·沃森的虛擬助手。

Goelandhisteamdeveloped several versionsJill Watsonbeforereleasingher to the online forums.

戈爾教授和其團隊在將吉爾·沃森投放到在線論壇之前就已經開發了幾個版本。

Atfirst，the virtual assistant wasn't too great. But Goel and his team sourced the online discussion forum to find all the 40，000 questions that had ever been asked since the classwaslaunched.

起初，虛擬助手的運行并不是很好。但是戈爾教授及其團隊從在線論壇上找到了該課程自開課以來被問及的4000個問題。

Then they began to feed Jill with the questions and answers. After some adjustmentsand sufficient time，Jill wasable to answer the students’questions correctly 97% the time.

然后把問題和答案提供給吉爾。經過多次調整及充足的時間后，吉爾 97% 的情況下都能正確回答學生的問題。

Thevirtualassistantbecamesoadvanced andrealisticthatthestudentsdidn'tknowshe wasacomputer.

這一虛擬助手十分先進逼真，以至于學生們都不知道她是一臺計算機。

The students，who were studying artificial intelligence，were interactingwith thevirtualassistant and couldn't tell it apart froma real human being.

學習人工智能的學生與虛擬助手進行互動時，都不能將其和真人區分開來。

Goel didn'tinform them about Jill's true identityaftertwoweeks.Thestudentswereactually verypositive about the experience.

兩周后，戈爾才告訴學生們吉爾的真實身份。學生們對這一體驗都十分看好。

The goal Pressor Goel’svirtual assistant next year is to take over answering 40% all the questions posed by students on theonline forum.The name Jill Watson will， course， change to something else next semester.

戈爾教授的虛擬助手明年的目標是回答在線論壇上學生提出的 40% 的問題。當然，吉爾·沃森這一名字下學期也會改變。

Pressor Goel has a much rosier outlook on the future artificial intelligence than， say， Elon Musk，Stephen Hawking，Bill Gates or SteveWozniak.

相比埃隆·馬斯克、斯蒂芬·霍金、比爾·蓋茨和史蒂夫·沃茲尼亞克等人，戈爾教授對于人工智能的未來有更樂觀的看法。