Alexa and Watson

An unexpected combination. How practical is this?  AI helping to build AI.

Building Alexa Skills With IBM Watson and OpenWhisk
Check out this open source project that uses IBM Watson Conversation and OpenWhisk to efficiently create conversation flows for Alexa skills.   by Niklas Heidloff  

Jill Watson at Ga Tech

Have worked with many TA's myself, so this is interesting.  It also relates to chatbots too, lessons to are to be learned here.   As in all tests of this type I wonder about the difference between providing value to someone versus fooling them.  Not the same thing. The goal can sculpt the results.    Read the full piece.

Jill Watson, Round Three.
The Georgia Institute of Technology (Georgia Tech) is beginning its third semester using a virtual teaching assistant (TA) system, called Jill Watson, in an online course about artificial intelligence (AI).

Jill, which is implemented on IBM's Watson platform, was first used last spring to successfully answer particular types of frequently asked questions without the help of humans.

Georgia Tech professor Ashok Goel told the students at the beginning of the semester some of their TAs may or may not be computers. "Then I watched the chat rooms for months as they tried to differentiate between human and artificial intelligence," Goel says.   ... " 

Full list of advisory systems being followed.

TEDx Talk on Personalization of Learning Assistance

TEDx talk on Design & Intelligence Lab's Jill Watson Experiment on Personalization of Learning assistance at scale

Ashok is sharing how he believes he can use artificial intelligence to scale personalized learning. He used AI to build Jill Watson, an AI teaching assistant and none of the students noticed.

Ashok K. Goel is a Professor of Computer Science and Cognitive Science in the School of Interactive Computing at Georgia Institute of Technology. He is Director of the School's Ph.D. Program in Human-Centered Computing, Coordinator of the faculty consortium on Creativity, Learning & Cognition, and Co-Coordinator of the faculty consortium on Interactive Intelligence. He is Director of the School's Design & Intelligence Laboratory and a Co-Director of Georgia Tech's Center for Biologically Inspired Design.

Ashok conducts research into human-centered computing, artificial intelligence and cognitive science, with a focus on computational design, discovery, and creativity. The goals of his research are to understand human creativity in conceptual design of complex systems as well as scientific problem solving, to develop interactive tools for aiding people in such creative tasks, and to invent computational systems that are themselves creative.  .... " 

Robot Teaching Assistants

Reminiscent of the legendary Eliza system.  .... Expectations are being driven higher .... See this mornings WSJ,  may require  registration. Imagine Discovering That Your Teaching Assistant Really Is a Robot   More to follow on this effort, out of Georgia Tech.  This was for Prof Ashok Goel's AI course.

" .... Since January, “Jill,” as she was known to the artificial-intelligence class, had been helping graduate students design programs that allow computers to solve certain problems, like choosing an image to complete a logical sequence.

“She was the person—well, the teaching assistant—who would remind us of due dates and post questions in the middle of the week to spark conversations,” said student Jennifer Gavin. ... " 

More in my blog about related work at Ga Tech.

(Update) And more on the creation of the Assistant in the CACM.