Last spring, Ashok K. Goel pulled off one of the great pranks in the history of artificial intelligence. In an online course, Mr. Goel, a computer-science professor at the Georgia Institute of Technology, relied on nine teaching assistants, including one named Jill Watson, to handle questions from the 300 students. Near the end of the term, Mr. Goel revealed to students that Jill was in fact a computerized assistant, powered by IBM’s Watson technology, which is designed to answer questions. A few students had suspicions about Jill along the way, but one thought Mr. Goel might be a computer, too. The successful experiment suggests that higher education — like many other industries — may be in for major change as artificial intelligence becomes more widespread. "Intelligent agents" — including well-known chatbots such as Amazon’s Alexa and Apple’s Siri — are becoming more sophisticated and are expected to eliminate 6 percent of jobs by 2021, primarily in areas like transportation and customer service, according to a new report by Forrester, a technology-research company. Is higher education next?

October 23, 2016 ・ From Chronicle of Higher Education