MOOCs mean more students, remote ones, who have lots of questions. To deal with the burden, Georgia Tech professor Ashok Goel, when offering an online Artificial Intelligence course, insinuated a robot Teaching Assistant powered by Watson into the proceedings. Most of the pupils never grew suspicious during their Q&As with the A.I. T.A., even a student who’d previously helped build Watson hardware. Does this demonstrate machine intelligence improving or humans becoming too passive in accepting what’s presented to them? Both, probably. It’s a dual lesson in technology and psychology.

From Melissa Korn at the Wall Street Journal:

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.

Ms. Watson—so named because she’s powered by International Business Machines Corp.’s Watson analytics system—wrote things like “Yep!” and “we’d love to,” speaking on behalf of her fellow TAs, in the online forum where students discussed coursework and submitted projects.

“It seemed very much like a normal conversation with a human being,” Ms. Gavin said.

Shreyas Vidyarthi, another student, ascribed human attributes to the TA—imagining her as a friendly Caucasian 20-something on her way to a Ph.D. 

Students were told of their guinea-pig status last month. “I was flabbergasted,” said Mr. Vidyarthi.

“Just when I wanted to nominate Jill Watson as an outstanding TA,” said Petr Bela.•