Professor uses virtual twin to talk to students

AN AUSTRALIAN accountancy professor got so tired of talking to his students that he designed a program to do the job for him.

George Mickhail (no relation) from the University of Wollongong created a virtual version of himself that can talk about organisational semiotics or the constraints of metacapitalism into the small hours of the morning, while the rest of us are snoozing.

The program is based on a chat engine program that draws on a database of linguistic terms to interact with users.

From his launch late last year as a simple text interface, Virtual George's responses have been refined through studying real chat sessions and their outcomes.

Apparently Mickhail was driven to design the program because the 20 or 30 emails from students asking for help on their courses were "driving him bananas".

Now the students talk to the virtual George and he can stay in bed. Many students are not even aware that they are talking to a simulation, if indeed "Mickhail" is a stimulating simulation.

He told the Sydney Morning Herald that students tell him they had a really good chat to him at three in the morning and are stunned to discover that they are talking to a machine. Still these are accountants.

The full story can be found here. µ