The educational chatbot is being developed by Khan Sidra Masood, a student on the MSc Business Information Systems (BIS) programme, under the supervision of Dr Andreas Martin and Dr Christoph Pimmer. The bot will train students in HIV/AIDS treatment and stimulate their subject interest via WhatsApp. In contrast to human teachers, the bot can chat with many health professional students simultaneously. Christoph Pimmer sees it as a major advance that chatbots can now learn from user interactions and that they are getting better at sounding natural, using everyday language. This project is just one example of what AI can achieve using a chatbot and the two lecturers are expanding this strand of work. “The bigger picture is that we are developing intelligent tutors to support people in their daily learning and problem solving,” says Christoph. “They are much more knowledgeable than we are on particular subjects and are changing how we obtain knowledge and interact with computational devices. This will permeate all of our life spheres, from formal education to informal and lifelong learning.”
www.fhnw.ch/en/people/christoph-pimmer