All in a day's work for AI, from the classroom to studio

From answering student queries to creating design concepts, Al is already changing nature of jobs here

- Cheow Sue-Ann and Tay Hong Yi

Assistant Professor Leonard Ng's new teaching assistant, Leodar, is a hard worker.

Leodar has been answering student queries at all hours since January, be they administrative questions such as when examinations are held or an explanation of concepts taught in class.

"Aiyoh, you ask one very solid question lah," Leodar said, when posed a question on course content.

Do not be fooled by Leodar's sassy Singlish-inflected replies - it is a chatbot powered by generative artificial intelligence (AI).

It is among the first customised chatbots to be rolled out to students in Singapore, and an example of how AI is already changing the nature of jobs here.

Leodar was created to help the students taking the data science and AI class that Prof Ng teaches at Nanyang Technological University's (NTU) School of Materials Science and Engineering, alongside Associate Professor Kedar Hippagaonkar.

"Leodar reduces the administrative workload of the professors and teaching assistants, so they can focus more on actually developing teaching content and conducting research," said Prof Ng, 37.

"With Leodar answering common questions, instructors receive much fewer student consultations now, so we can focus on developing and refining the classes and curriculum." While Leodar's underlying large language model is Claude, a product of AI start-up Anthropic, Prof Ng said the chatbot was further trained over 3 months before launch on course materials and administrative details to provide class-specific answers.

Leodar was developed and tested by Prof Ng, the team leader, and Dr Maung Thway, 34, and Dr Jose Recatala Gomez, 31, both of whom are research fellows at NTU.

Students can ask the chatbot to generate example computer code as a guide when they are working on assignments.

They were even allowed unlimited use of Leodar during their continuous assessment in February.