Jill Watson has been a teaching assistant (TA) at the Georgia Institute of Technology for five years now, helping students day and night with all manner of course-related inquiries. But for all the hard work she has done, she still can’t qualify for outstanding TA of the year.
That’s because Jill Watson, contrary to many students’ belief, is not actually human.
Created back in 2015 by Ashok Goel, professor of computer science and cognitive science at the Institute, Jill Watson is an artificial system based on IBM’s Watson artificial intelligence software. Her role consists of answering students’ questions – a task she remarkably carries out with a 97% accuracy rate, for inquiries ranging from confirming the word count for an assignment, to complex technical questions related to the content of the course.
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