A Robot Has Been Teaching University Students for Months, and NO ONE Noticed HD

Most of the 300 students in professor Ashok Goel class at Georgia Tech had no idea that for months, they’ve been virtually interacting, asking and learning from a robot. The bot, named Jill Watson, was an experiment Goel administered to see if his students and spot the difference. When the secret was out, almost everyone was shocked they were talking to a robot for the past 4-5 months. The Wall Street Journal reports that “Last year, a team of Georgia Tech researchers began creating Ms. Watson by poring through nearly 40,000 postings on a discussion forum known as “Piazza” and training her to answer related questions based on prior responses. By late March, she began posting responses live.” One student suspected there was an A.I. lurking somewhere and even asked the professor. Nearly everyone else just went about their business not suspecting a thing.