Artificial Intelligence Course Creates AI Teaching Assistant

College of Computing Professor Ashok Goel teaches Knowledge Based Artificial Intelligence (KBAI) every semester. And every time he offers it, Goel estimates, his 300 or so students post roughly 10,000 messages in the online forums -- far too many inquiries for him and his eight teaching assistants (TA) to handle. That's why Goel added a ninth TA this semester. Her name is Jill Watson, and she's unlike any other TA in the world. Jill is a computer -- a virtual TA -- implemented, in part, using technologies from IBM's Watson platform.