AI Quests, the educational programme from Google Research and the Stanford Accelerator for Learning, is coming to Italy
How can artificial intelligence help predict a flood? How can it contribute to the diagnosis of an eye condition? And what does it mean to train a model, choose the right data, assess its quality and correct one’s decisions?
These are some of the questions at the heart of AI Quests, the new educational initiative promoted by Google Research and Stanford Accelerator for Learning, presented in Italy during an event also attended by Mirta Michilli, Director General of the Fondazione Mondo Digitale. The programme, designed for students aged 11 to 14, offers an engaging way to explore artificial intelligence: not just as a technology to be used, but as a tool to be understood, questioned and applied responsibly to real-world challenges.
AI Quests invites young people to step into the shoes of researchers, embarking on immersive adventures set in a fantasy world but inspired by real scientific projects. The programme is guided by Professor Skye, the game’s mentor, who accompanies students through the various missions, helping them to experiment, make mistakes, reflect on their choices and improve the solutions they adopt.
The first mission, River Fair, is inspired by research into flood forecasting. Students collect data on rainfall and river flow, assess its reliability, train and test a predictive model, and then use it in the game to help a community anticipate the risk of flooding. In this way, they discover first-hand that artificial intelligence does not produce ‘magic’ answers: data quality, human judgement and the ability to interpret results all influence the outcomes and impact of technologies.
The second mission, Canyon Crepuscolo, is inspired by research into diabetic retinopathy, a condition that can lead to blindness. In the coming months, Studio Sbellicoso will also be available, dedicated to Connectomics, the field of research that studies the mapping and understanding of the human brain. At the end of each mission, students virtually meet the researchers who developed the real-world projects, through video messages that link the gaming experience to scientific research and its ethical and social implications.
In Italy, AI Quests will be integrated into the curriculum of Experience AI, the programme developed by Google DeepMind and the Raspberry Pi Foundation, brought to Italian schools thanks to a partnership with the Fondazione Mondo Digitale. Experience AI offers free resources for teachers and students on artificial intelligence and machine learning, including lessons, presentations, worksheets and activities designed to be used by teachers of various subjects.
For the Fondazione Mondo Digitale, the arrival of AI Quests reinforces work already underway with schools and teachers: making AI education accessible, practical and inclusive. The Experience AI project, of which FMD is a partner for Italy, supports teachers in using practical and inclusive methodologies and promotes a creative, critical and responsible approach to AI among students, with a focus on the most disadvantaged contexts.
The educational challenge is not merely to introduce new tools into the classroom. It is to help the younger generation understand how they work, what choices guide them, what responsibilities they entail, and how they can be directed towards the common good. With AI Quests, artificial intelligence enters the classroom as a research experience: a journey in which learning means observing, formulating hypotheses, using data, correcting errors and devising solutions to problems that affect us all.
