Google has announced "AI Quests," a program it describes as a "fun new way" for students aged 11 to 14 to learn about artificial intelligence. Developed in collaboration with the Stanford Accelerator for Learning, the program invites students to act as Google researchers. They will use AI to tackle issues related to climate, health, and science through a series of immersive adventures, getting a direct look at how the technology works.
These adventures are basically games designed to teach kids about AI without needing to code. The quests are inspired by AI projects from Google Research and are built to "address real-world societal challenges". Each quest is packaged with an in-game mentor named Professor Skye, a complete lesson plan, and a teacher guide. After finishing an adventure, students get to see a recorded message from the real-world researchers whose work inspired the game. Google says it will launch its first AI Quests starting today.
The first quest, called Market Marshes, is available now and focuses on predicting floods, drawing from Google"s own Flood Forecasting research. In the game, students must collect relevant data sources, such as rainfall and river flow, judge the quality of that data, and then train and test their model to help characters in the game anticipate the next flood.
The last two quests are Dusky Dunes, which involves using an AI model to detect diabetic retinopathy, a condition that can cause loss of sight, and Polar Peaks, which takes its cues from Connectomics research to map the human brain.
The program is available at research.google/ai-quests for anyone interested in trying it. Google says you do not need a powerful computer to run the program, but the company has listed the following minimum requirements:
- Intel i5-5250U 1.60GHz
- 4GB RAM
- Chrome v139 (or later)
If you"re a teacher, you can find the complete Teacher Guide for the first quest in this Google Docs file. Google also noted that Experience AI, an educational program from Google DeepMind and the Raspberry Pi Foundation, and CRAFT from the Stanford Accelerator for Learning are embedding AI Quests into their own material.