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A professor built a chatbot to be his teaching assistant

washingtonpost.com

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Re: A professor built a chatbot to be his teaching assistant

#81

Post by SilasX »

forrestbrazeal wrote: post #73

I was a student in this class, and had at least one question on the forum answered (correctly) by Jill. I can see this technology being hugely useful for teachers who conduct large lecture classes in any subject on a regular basis. That said, I'd be even more excited if Jill had the ability to synthesize new answers to questions through some type of case-based reasoning. This would require Jill receiving feedback on…

If you had some reddit/HN-style forum where the questions get replies and votes, that would be valuable information for what counts as a "good answer".

Re: A professor built a chatbot to be his teaching assistant

#82

Post by SilasX »

Jordrok wrote: post #18
wyldfire wrote: post #4

That's stunning. I studied AI in undergrad and I just didn't give it enough of my focus at the time. Little did I know that in my lifetime I'd see real world evidence of computers passing the Turing Test with flying colors. Of course, Turing was right. What's outside of the set of computable sets? Not much! I recently read an article headline that talked about creeps using AI to stalk porn stars. It's interesting to…

Certainly an impressive result, and may have some practical application for easing the burden of repeatedly answering the same question asked in different ways. I'm not sure I would call this passing the Turing test though. The picture at the top of the original article[1] is very informative. The bot does a passable job of answering the initial question, but it seems like a canned response and when the student asks…

Also "the" Turing test requires you to be actively probing for evidence it's a bot. Though this "no suspicion" Turing Test is certainly progress.

Re: A professor built a chatbot to be his teaching assistant

#83

Post by exodust »

oarsinsync wrote: post #16
exodust wrote: post #3

Already posted in original form: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11688061 I don't know why SMH would take a Washington Post story and change the title to something stupid, while keeping everything else the same, but that's what they've done. Wait.. there's one more difference. A pathetic picture of "an AI". "an AI"? Seriously SMH, just use the original title. Your editorial blundering is embarrassing, and could…

Thanks for that, the original article was a much better read.

the original has the sample interaction with students, so its definitely worth switching, otherwise its the same copy apart from butchered title.

SMH is a bottom of barrel source. Changing a story title to something more click-baity, sums up the entire Fairfax network and Australian news media in general.

Re: A professor built a chatbot to be his teaching assistant

#84

Post by qb45 »

mulmen wrote: post #65
qb45 wrote: post #37

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You can automate replying with a link to the course webpage ToC. Also, make it absolutely clear that the reply is automatic. Hopefully they'll get the hint. Or heck, just make it a policy that if they haven't received an answer in a week, this means they need to look at the website. I don't know why some people strive to be so accommodating to laziness nowadays.

Laziness is a virtue. What you're suggesting is not all that different than creating a webpage that says "read the book" instead of adding value. If a bot can be created to make discovering answers easier why shouldn't it be done?

There are two kinds of laziness: one which makes you visit course website, copy teacher's email and send him some stupid question whose answer is one CTRL+F away on the same website, and another which makes you want to automate responding to such emails.

I'm not sure if the former is that virtuous. Those people look like they are growing completely helpless.

Re: A professor built a chatbot to be his teaching assistant

#85

Post by adekok »

olalonde wrote: post #38
adekok wrote: post #29

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Having written documentation for end users, that will work for only a portion of them. Probably most, which is good. But there are a significant percentage of users who can't (or won't) read documentation. Even they do manage to read it, they don't understand it. For some reason, human interaction works better for those people. They ask a question, and someone copies the answer from the documentation, and pastes it i…

> I would love to know the psychology behind this phenomenon. Laziness. It's usually faster to ask someone a question than to look up the answer. I used to do this on IRC when learning a new programming language and it saved me a lot of time. If you want an even faster answer, you guess the wrong answer and wait for someone to correct you ( https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Cunningham%27s_Law ).

> Laziness. It's usually faster to ask someone a question than to look up the answer.

:(

My common answer is "If you're too lazy to read the documentation, I'm too lazy to cut & paste it into the email".

Followed by them complaining about how I'm an asshole...

Re: A professor built a chatbot to be his teaching assistant

#86

Post by Tiksi »

olalonde wrote: post #38
adekok wrote: post #29

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Having written documentation for end users, that will work for only a portion of them. Probably most, which is good. But there are a significant percentage of users who can't (or won't) read documentation. Even they do manage to read it, they don't understand it. For some reason, human interaction works better for those people. They ask a question, and someone copies the answer from the documentation, and pastes it i…

> I would love to know the psychology behind this phenomenon. Laziness. It's usually faster to ask someone a question than to look up the answer. I used to do this on IRC when learning a new programming language and it saved me a lot of time. If you want an even faster answer, you guess the wrong answer and wait for someone to correct you ( https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Cunningham%27s_Law ).

It might not apply to you, but in my experience, people that ask questions that would faster be answered by google never actually learn the topic they're asking about. I think 90% of my knowledge was stumbled upon while looking for the answer to something else.

Sure, you might get the answer that X is the best way to do what you're trying to do, but if you read the docs, you might learn that what you're trying to do with X is already implemented and you can skip all that and just use Y. ( you not meaning you specifically here, just in general. )

Re: A professor built a chatbot to be his teaching assistant

#87

Post by Swizec »

SilasX wrote: post #53
adekok wrote: post #29

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Having written documentation for end users, that will work for only a portion of them. Probably most, which is good. But there are a significant percentage of users who can't (or won't) read documentation. Even they do manage to read it, they don't understand it. For some reason, human interaction works better for those people. They ask a question, and someone copies the answer from the documentation, and pastes it i…

Similarly, I know people who are incapable of communicating information via email and insist that they must talk on the phone or in person. Situation 1: "Hey can you call me?" Sure, what do you need to talk about? "The status of the Spark server." Okay. Find a quiet place, place the call, debug connection problems so we can hear each other. So what do you need? "Is the Spark server up?" Yes. "Okay, thanks, bye." Situ…

To be fair, that is one hell of a poorly written email. HemingwayApp flags 2 of the 3 sentences as hard or very hard to read.

Re: A professor built a chatbot to be his teaching assistant

#88

Post by frozenport »

burkaman wrote: post #20
ikeboy wrote: post #9

>Goel and his teaching assistants receive more than 10,000 questions a semester from students on the course's online forum. Is this normal?

Not 10,000 questions, 10,000 messages: http://www.news.gatech.edu/2016/05/09/artificial-intelligenc... That article says ~300 students, 30 posts each seems pretty normal.

No! I've done a 300 person electronics class and we've gotten about 300 questions with a handful of people who ask the bulk of our questions.

Re: A professor built a chatbot to be his teaching assistant

#89

Post by jerryhuang100 »

in a way i'm not sure why there is still no parents or students complaining they're kind of being 'defrauded' for a chatbot while paying high tuition (cue discover card tv ad.) one thing for sure is that there are a lot of undergrad or grad students around looking for a part-time job and teaching experience. i know this is a great achievement in AI with huge potential in open course, and great for grant application, but on the very other end is someone paying with an expectation of a human interaction & care. for years i've seen a lot of complaints about foreign human TAs.

Re: A professor built a chatbot to be his teaching assistant

#90

Post by SEJeff »

SilasX wrote: post #81
forrestbrazeal wrote: post #73

I was a student in this class, and had at least one question on the forum answered (correctly) by Jill. I can see this technology being hugely useful for teachers who conduct large lecture classes in any subject on a regular basis. That said, I'd be even more excited if Jill had the ability to synthesize new answers to questions through some type of case-based reasoning. This would require Jill receiving feedback on…

If you had some reddit/HN-style forum where the questions get replies and votes, that would be valuable information for what counts as a "good answer".

Yeah I can see that going over well in Physics McPhysicsFace 101
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