Because Goel didn't initially tell his students that Jill was in fact an AI system, he was forced to add a short delay to her responses. Otherwise, her students might notice how much quicker she was at answering questions, even in the middle of the night. Jill Watson's status as a teaching assistant should … Read more: Teaching assistant robots will reinvent academia

Students at Georgia Institute of Technology found out that a teacher assistant giving them assistance they was actually Jill an artificially intelligent robot. Jill was created to provide faster answers and feedback to students and take some of the pressure of teaching large classes off the instructors. The class is a core requirement of Georgia Tech's online master's program in computer science, and it tends to draw a lot of questions from students. It's offered every semester, and each time, the 300 or so students enrolled post roughly 10,000 messages in the course's online forums, Goel estimates. That volume has often overwhelmed Goel and his eight teaching assistants, so this time, he added a ninth: Jill.