Computer science professor "hired" IBM Watson as his assistant
For several months of work, the students did not understand that it was not the man who communicated with them, but the robot
The computer science professor at the Georgia Institute of Technology, Ashok Goel, in January told the graduate students that a new assistant, whom the professor had recently hired, will now be helping to work. Communication with assistants often takes place online - they notify students of upcoming events, such as the need to take another job or change in the schedule of classes. The professor usually has to communicate with hundreds of students online, for one person this is an impossible task. Therefore, it is usually assisted by 8 assistants. But even for this team, the task of responding to all students' messages in time turned out to be too difficult, so Goel announced his intention to hire the ninth assistant. That was done - soon the users of the student forum were greeted by Jill Watson, a new member of the team of assistants.
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Watson went straight 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 the team of assistants. She not only sent email notifications, but also commented on the posts of students on the forum. What a surprise pupils were when, at the end of April, they learned that in fact Jill was not a man, but a car. More precisely, a service specially developed based on the capabilities of the IBM Watson cognitive system.
Why was it decided to use the cognitive system? The fact is that during the years of communication with his pupils, the professor realized that students ask about the same questions on the forums. And the computer could easily respond to most of them. Jill Watson, before "getting acquainted" with the students, studied on the basis of the full 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 was following this. Incorrect answers he deleted, and the system continued to self-learn. Already in March, the accuracy of her work reached almost 100%.
For several months of communication with the “assistant professor” of 300 students, no one suspected that he was talking to 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 communication with Jill was always normal, like any other conversation with a normal person. Most students thought the nature of communication with Jill was friendly.
Without an assistant, the professor would be hard. The fact is that in January alone the wards posted about 10,000 questions and comments on the forum, and many of them were required to be answered. Jill was able to answer about 40% of the questions, including the most difficult. For example, "Define the concept of" mind "."
Professor Ashok Goel is at work in the audience (source: news.gatech.edu)
Interestingly, the artificial machine nature of the “assistant professor” was not even felt by the student Barrick Reed, who is often faced with the need to use the services of IBMWatson. He said that he did not feel anything special when communicating with an 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 from the same university worked on this project for several months. They decided to use the capabilities of IBM Watson also to answer students' questions in a discussion forum known as “Piazza” (marketplace - editor's note). For some time, Jill coached precisely on this platform, and then sent to help students (starting in March of this year). The service became a technical assistant only after scientists were convinced that everything was fine with the answers on the forum: Jill communicated there at the “expert” level, according to experts. In this case, you should not confuse Jill with bots who are trying to answer questions from users at various services (banks, online stores, etc.). This is a completely different level of communication.
They once joked over the name of the “assistant” on the forum, saying that it was probably the IBM Watson supercomputer that came to the forum, and not a real person (remember, Jill's name is Watson). For all the time, there was only one suspicious student who noticed that the assistant responds very quickly. However, no one 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 assistants is constantly changing, no one will know which of the newcomers is the machine, and who is the man. Students will be given the task to determine who is actually a person and who is a machine. And this will not be as easy as it seems.
The computer science professor at the Georgia Institute of Technology, Ashok Goel, in January told the graduate students that a new assistant, whom the professor had recently hired, will now be helping to work. Communication with assistants often takes place online - they notify students of upcoming events, such as the need to take another job or change in the schedule of classes. The professor usually has to communicate with hundreds of students online, for one person this is an impossible task. Therefore, it is usually assisted by 8 assistants. But even for this team, the task of responding to all students' messages in time turned out to be too difficult, so Goel announced his intention to hire the ninth assistant. That was done - soon the users of the student forum were greeted by Jill Watson, a new member of the team of assistants.
')
Watson went straight 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 the team of assistants. She not only sent email notifications, but also commented on the posts of students on the forum. What a surprise pupils were when, at the end of April, they learned that in fact Jill was not a man, but a car. More precisely, a service specially developed based on the capabilities of the IBM Watson cognitive system.
Why was it decided to use the cognitive system? The fact is that during the years of communication with his pupils, the professor realized that students ask about the same questions on the forums. And the computer could easily respond to most of them. Jill Watson, before "getting acquainted" with the students, studied on the basis of the full 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 was following this. Incorrect answers he deleted, and the system continued to self-learn. Already in March, the accuracy of her work reached almost 100%.
For several months of communication with the “assistant professor” of 300 students, no one suspected that he was talking to 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 communication with Jill was always normal, like any other conversation with a normal person. Most students thought the nature of communication with Jill was friendly.
Without an assistant, the professor would be hard. The fact is that in January alone the wards posted about 10,000 questions and comments on the forum, and many of them were required to be answered. Jill was able to answer about 40% of the questions, including the most difficult. For example, "Define the concept of" mind "."
Professor Ashok Goel is at work in the audience (source: news.gatech.edu)
Interestingly, the artificial machine nature of the “assistant professor” was not even felt by the student Barrick Reed, who is often faced with the need to use the services of IBMWatson. He said that he did not feel anything special when communicating with an 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 from the same university worked on this project for several months. They decided to use the capabilities of IBM Watson also to answer students' questions in a discussion forum known as “Piazza” (marketplace - editor's note). For some time, Jill coached precisely on this platform, and then sent to help students (starting in March of this year). The service became a technical assistant only after scientists were convinced that everything was fine with the answers on the forum: Jill communicated there at the “expert” level, according to experts. In this case, you should not confuse Jill with bots who are trying to answer questions from users at various services (banks, online stores, etc.). This is a completely different level of communication.
They once joked over the name of the “assistant” on the forum, saying that it was probably the IBM Watson supercomputer that came to the forum, and not a real person (remember, Jill's name is Watson). For all the time, there was only one suspicious student who noticed that the assistant responds very quickly. However, no one 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 assistants is constantly changing, no one will know which of the newcomers is the machine, and who is the man. Students will be given the task to determine who is actually a person and who is a machine. And this will not be as easy as it seems.
Source: https://habr.com/ru/post/303188/
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