Google launched a brain-mapping game called “Polar Peaks” to teach students artificial intelligence skills after its AI Quests series recorded more than 400,000 completed quests, the company said.
The release expands the series from flood forecasting and eye disease detection into neuroscience. Google announced it in “Our newest AI Quest: Mapping the human brain,” published Oct. 26 in its AI blog.
Google Research and the Stanford Accelerator for Learning created the game for students ages 11 to 14, the company said. It is the third installment in a series available in 10 languages.
Students work through a fictional investigation into a game character’s memory loss. Guided by mentors within the game, they scan and map neurons, the nerve cells that carry information through the brain.
The activities include cleaning data and testing models, giving students tasks that researchers perform when working with AI. Google said the lessons teach students that the technology needs human supervision and critical thinking.
The company described the game as a way for students to learn how AI works while exploring its use in scientific research. Students take on the role of researchers and work through problems inspired by Google’s own projects.
Google said more than a decade of its research in connectomics, the science of mapping connections between nerve cells in the brain, inspired the quest. It did not provide a separate research finding from the classroom game.
After completing the quest, students hear from two researchers involved in the company’s brain-mapping work. That work includes a complete map of a fruit fly brain, which Google described as the largest brain map by neuron count to date.
The earlier quests draw on Google Research’s flood forecasting work and an AI model for screening for diabetic retinopathy, an eye disease. The new installment applies the same educational format to brain research.
Google is also releasing teacher training through its AI Educator Series to help educators fit the games into existing lessons. The modules are intended to support classroom discussion and reinforce the AI concepts students encounter during play.
Training for the first two quests is available. Google said the module accompanying “Polar Peaks” will follow in November, leaving teachers without that dedicated training at the new game’s launch.
The company said it plans to work with educators and partners to bring more quests into classrooms during the school year. It gave no timetable for another game.
