June 14, 2016 at 01:00IT professor hired IBM Watson as his assistant
For several months of work, students did not understand that it was not a person who talked to them, but a robot.
Professor of Informatics from Georgia Institute of TechnologyAshok Goel (Ashok Goel) in January told graduate students that they will now help in the work of a new assistant, whom the professor recently hired. Communication with assistants often takes place online - they notify students of upcoming events, such as the need to hand over another job or change the schedule of classes. A professor usually has to communicate with hundreds of students online, for one person this is an impossible task. Therefore, he is usually assisted by 8 assistants. But even for this team, the task of responding to all student messages on time proved to be too complicated, so Goel announced his intention to hire a ninth assistant. What was done - soon the users of the student forum were welcomed by Jill Watson, a new member of the team of assistants.
Watson immediately started to work, and the students were very pleased with her punctuality and responsibility. It was Jill who helped more than others, fulfilling a huge part of the duties of a team of assistants. She not only sent out email notifications, but also commented on student posts on the forum. What was the surprise of the students when at the end of April they found out that in fact Jill was not a man, but a car. More specifically, a service specifically designed based on the capabilities of the IBM Watson cognitive system.
Why was it decided to use the cognitive system? The fact is that over the years of communication with his students, the professor realized that on forums, students ask about the same questions. And the computer could easily answer most of them. Jill Watson, before “meeting” students, studied on the basis of a complete database of questions and answers from the Piazza forum. This database contained information for several years.
Initially, the system sometimes gave incorrect answers - but the professor himself followed this. He deleted incorrect answers, and the system continued to self-learn. Already in March, the accuracy of its work reached almost 100%.
For several months of communication with the "assistant professor" of 300 students, no one suspected that he was communicating with the machine. Yes, there were sometimes oddities in communication, but not too often, and the answers of real people are often unusual (the answer is out of place, an error in the lexical structure, etc.). In general, the students were very pleased with Jill. “I would even suggest nominating Jill Watson for the title of Outstanding Technical Assistant,” says one student. Another student notes that talking with Jill was always normal, like any other conversation with a normal person. Most students thought the nature of communication with Jill was friendly.
It would be hard for a professor without an assistant. The fact is that in January alone, wards posted about 10,000 questions and comments on the forum, and many of them needed to be answered. Jill was able to answer about 40% of the questions, including the most difficult. For example, “Define the term“ mind. ”
Professor Ashok Goel at work in an audience (source: news.gatech.edu)
It is interesting that even the student Barric Reed, who often faces the need to use IBMWatson services, did not feel the artificial machine nature of the “assistant professor”. He said that he did not feel anything special when communicating with the assistant professor - the answers were quite normal, there was nothing unusual.
Note that Jill Watson was created by more than one person: a team of researchers at the same university worked on this project for several months. They decided to use the capabilities of IBM Watson also to answer students' questions at a discussion forum known as “Piazza” (Market Square - Ed.). For some time, Jill was trained on this platform, and then they sent him to help students (starting in March of this year). The service became a technical assistant only after scientists made sure that everything was fine with the answers on the forum: Jill talked there at the “expert” level, according to experts. At the same time, do not confuse Jill with bots that try to answer user questions on various services (banks, online stores, etc.). This is a completely different level of communication.
The surname of the “assistant” was once joked at the forum, saying that it was probably IBM Watson supercomputer that came to the forum, and not a real person (I recall the surname Jill - Watson). For all the time, there was only one suspicious student who noticed that the assistant responds very quickly. Nevertheless, nobody revealed the real state of things before the teacher himself did.
Next year, the professor plans to “hire” another virtual assistant. And since the composition of the assistants is constantly changing, no one will know which of the newcomers is a machine, and which is a man. Students will be given the task to determine who is actually a person and who is a machine. And to do this will not be as easy as it seems.
Professor of Informatics from Georgia Institute of TechnologyAshok Goel (Ashok Goel) in January told graduate students that they will now help in the work of a new assistant, whom the professor recently hired. Communication with assistants often takes place online - they notify students of upcoming events, such as the need to hand over another job or change the schedule of classes. A professor usually has to communicate with hundreds of students online, for one person this is an impossible task. Therefore, he is usually assisted by 8 assistants. But even for this team, the task of responding to all student messages on time proved to be too complicated, so Goel announced his intention to hire a ninth assistant. What was done - soon the users of the student forum were welcomed by Jill Watson, a new member of the team of assistants.
Watson immediately started to work, and the students were very pleased with her punctuality and responsibility. It was Jill who helped more than others, fulfilling a huge part of the duties of a team of assistants. She not only sent out email notifications, but also commented on student posts on the forum. What was the surprise of the students when at the end of April they found out that in fact Jill was not a man, but a car. More specifically, a service specifically designed based on the capabilities of the IBM Watson cognitive system.
Why was it decided to use the cognitive system? The fact is that over the years of communication with his students, the professor realized that on forums, students ask about the same questions. And the computer could easily answer most of them. Jill Watson, before “meeting” students, studied on the basis of a complete database of questions and answers from the Piazza forum. This database contained information for several years.
Initially, the system sometimes gave incorrect answers - but the professor himself followed this. He deleted incorrect answers, and the system continued to self-learn. Already in March, the accuracy of its work reached almost 100%.
For several months of communication with the "assistant professor" of 300 students, no one suspected that he was communicating with the machine. Yes, there were sometimes oddities in communication, but not too often, and the answers of real people are often unusual (the answer is out of place, an error in the lexical structure, etc.). In general, the students were very pleased with Jill. “I would even suggest nominating Jill Watson for the title of Outstanding Technical Assistant,” says one student. Another student notes that talking with Jill was always normal, like any other conversation with a normal person. Most students thought the nature of communication with Jill was friendly.
It would be hard for a professor without an assistant. The fact is that in January alone, wards posted about 10,000 questions and comments on the forum, and many of them needed to be answered. Jill was able to answer about 40% of the questions, including the most difficult. For example, “Define the term“ mind. ”
Professor Ashok Goel at work in an audience (source: news.gatech.edu)
It is interesting that even the student Barric Reed, who often faces the need to use IBMWatson services, did not feel the artificial machine nature of the “assistant professor”. He said that he did not feel anything special when communicating with the assistant professor - the answers were quite normal, there was nothing unusual.
Note that Jill Watson was created by more than one person: a team of researchers at the same university worked on this project for several months. They decided to use the capabilities of IBM Watson also to answer students' questions at a discussion forum known as “Piazza” (Market Square - Ed.). For some time, Jill was trained on this platform, and then they sent him to help students (starting in March of this year). The service became a technical assistant only after scientists made sure that everything was fine with the answers on the forum: Jill talked there at the “expert” level, according to experts. At the same time, do not confuse Jill with bots that try to answer user questions on various services (banks, online stores, etc.). This is a completely different level of communication.
The surname of the “assistant” was once joked at the forum, saying that it was probably IBM Watson supercomputer that came to the forum, and not a real person (I recall the surname Jill - Watson). For all the time, there was only one suspicious student who noticed that the assistant responds very quickly. Nevertheless, nobody revealed the real state of things before the teacher himself did.
Next year, the professor plans to “hire” another virtual assistant. And since the composition of the assistants is constantly changing, no one will know which of the newcomers is a machine, and which is a man. Students will be given the task to determine who is actually a person and who is a machine. And to do this will not be as easy as it seems.