美國一高校機器人助教太像人 授課5個月無人發現
There are some human attributes robots could never replace - or at least that's what you might hope.
有一些工作是機器人永遠無法替代的--至少你可能是這樣認爲的。But one university has brought that into question by replacing one of their teaching assistants with a machine. And none of the students realized.
然而，一所大學在使用一款新型機器人代替助教之後，對此觀點表示懷疑。因爲沒有一個學生意識到這一問題。Jill Watson, an IBM-designed bot, has been helping graduate students at Georgia Institute of Technology solve problems with their design projects since January.
IBM公司研發出的這款名爲吉爾·沃特森的機器人，自今年1月起，就開始幫助美國佐治亞理工大學的畢業生們解答設計項目中的問題。
Responding to questions over email and posted on forums, Jill had a casual, colloquial tone, and was able to offer nuanced and accurate responses within minutes. Her replies included 'yep!' and 'we'd love to'.
通過郵件或者論壇回覆問題時，吉爾的語氣很隨意、很口語化，並能在很短時間內做出精確絕妙的答覆。她常常會說，“耶普（表贊同的口頭禪）”和“我很喜歡”。
The students had no idea until they were told - and many were shocked.
學生們直到被告知後才得知她是機器人，許多人都震驚了。'We were taking an AI course, so I had to imagine that it was possible there might be an AI lurking around,' said Bailey, who lives in Albuquerque, New Mexico.
來自美國新墨西哥洲阿爾伯克基的貝利表示：“沒想到我們每天是在和人工智能打交道，所以我估計，有可能還有一臺機器人潛伏在我們身邊。”'It seemed very much like a normal conversation with a human being,' Jennifer Gavin, one of the students, told the Wall Street Journal.
學生詹妮弗·加文在接受華爾街日報採訪時則表示：“我們之間的交流完全就像兩個普通人一樣”。Another student, Petr Bela, told the newspaper: 'Just when I wanted to nominate Jill Watson as an outstanding TA.'
而另一個學生佩特·貝拉表示：“我正準備將吉爾·沃特森提名爲最佳助教”。The experiment sent shockwaves through the tech industry, with many questioning the ethics of covertly inserting artificial intelligence into real-life situations.
這個實驗給科技行業帶來了巨大的衝擊，同時，對於其私自將人工智能加入到真實的生活中，也有很多人質疑其倫理性。But Ashok Goel, the computer science professor who designed the project, insisted it was a worthwhile experiment - and Jill performed a necessary task.
但是這個項目的設計者、計算機科學教授阿肖克·戈爾 堅稱，這是一個值得進行的實驗，吉爾承擔着一些必要的任務。'Students posted upwards of 10,000 messages on forums, taking up professors' time with routine responses. One of the main reasons many students drop out is because they don't receive enough teaching support. We created Jill as a way to provide faster answers and feedback.'
“學生們在論壇上提出了10000多個問題，這將佔用教授大量的時間去解答。很多學生退學的一個主要原因是因爲他們沒有得到足夠的教學幫助。所以我們創造出了吉爾，來提供更快捷的反饋和答覆。”Once Watson had a number of potential solutions, it was able to check against its database to make sure the answers made sense. Watson then evaluated the response and determined whether to virtually press the buzzer.
當吉爾有很多潛在的解決方案時，她還可以去數據庫檢查，以確保答案正確。接着，吉爾會評估這個答案，決定是否按下蜂鳴器。The bot would then speak with an electronic voice synthesized from recordings that actor Jeff Woodman made for an IBM text-to-speech program in 2004.
之後，她再用電子聲音講出來。該聲音是由演員傑夫·伍德曼在2004年爲IBM的文本語音合成程序錄制的聲音。
