Can an AI avatar join a discussion at a university?

01Debrief

A seminar can talk about it without it answering

After the AI avatar answers, the seminar wants to talk about the answer while the avatar is still on screen. That works. Students can ask one another what it meant, and the avatar does not cut in. It speaks up again only when someone calls it by name or follows up right away.

When someone explicitly agreed with it, its name right there in the sentence, the AI avatar stayed silent. It stayed silent again when a guest was asked whether he saw it the same way as the AI avatar. Its name came up both times, but neither sentence was addressed to it.

If someone asks about a study it does not know, it names none. It says it does not know the study. After the round, the seminar can look up whether the study exists and what it says.

02Formats

The mixing desk decides who can ask it a question

The AI avatar hears only the microphones that run through the mixing desk into our laptop. Anyone speaking without one of those microphones is not in the room as far as it is concerned.

• Panel

  Panel discussion at a conference

  The moderator calls on it like the other guests. The panel microphones run through the mixing desk, so it hears every voice on stage. The moderator puts a question from the audience to it by name. If an audience microphone is also routed to our laptop, it hears the question directly.

• Seminar

  Discussion in a seminar

  The lecturer moderates. A question from the rows without a microphone reaches it only through the lecturer, repeated aloud with its name or typed on the tablet. If students speak into a microphone on the mixing desk, they can follow up themselves after its answer, without its name. The conversation is set to end 12 s after the last sentence.

03Character

Tina for the lecture hall, Albert or Vera for a contested question

For the lecture hall we recommend Tina. She is set up as the explainer and makes the technical graspable for first-year students, even when experts sit on the panel too.

When the topic is a contested thesis, add Albert or Vera. Call on Albert and you get a position the panel can push against. Vera wants the source as soon as a round number comes up, which is the question students learn to ask in a methods course.

04Preparation

Two things students should know before the round

In a seminar, people often set up the context first, and the actual question comes in the last sentence. Nobody should count on the AI avatar still catching that as a follow-up after such a long lead-in. Anyone who takes a long run-up puts the actual question at the end, with the name in the same sentence, for example “…, Tina, was heisst das für uns?” (“…, Tina, what does that mean for us?”). Then it counts as a call.

In a Swiss seminar, a question quickly slips into Swiss German. It does not understand that. For the moment it understands standard German alone, and English is not available yet either. Tell students before the round begins, so that not even the first question comes in dialect.

05Room

Does your seminar room have a mixing desk?

A projector on the ceiling is not enough. The room needs a desk where the microphones come together and that sends the avatar’s voice to the speakers.

Start by asking your media technicians which rooms have a mixing desk. That decides whether the discussion can happen in the seminar room or has to move to a hall with a sound system.