How AI Could Help the Public Sector

Last Thanksgiving, I watched my father-in-law evaluate over one hundred exams for the high school class he teaches on the U.S. government. They were mostly short answer questions: matching different provisions of the U.S. Constitution, and explaining the contents of the Bill of Rights. The grading was tedious and time consuming, and took him hour after hour during what should have been a holiday. I started to wonder whether there could be a faster way. Automatic computer grading could do exactly that, learning from previous answers and getting better as it goes -- and it is already being used in some universities and for large online courses (MOOCs).