Georgia Tech students could not tell their AI teaching assistant was a bot

When Georgia Tech professor Ashok Goel introduced an AI teaching assistant named Jill Watson into an online course forum in January 2016, his students did not realize one of their teaching assistants was software. Georgia Tech’s official account notes that students “were initially unaware of Jill’s AI nature,” and that when they were told at the end of the term, their reactions “included a number of humorous responses.” Built on IBM’s Watson technology, Jill answered routine forum questions well enough to pass, in effect, as a member of the human teaching staff for an entire semester.