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ZDNET's key takeaways
Google's first AI Quest is available now for kids ages 11 to 14.
Each quest is based on actual Google AI research.
Tech companies are racing to market AI to students.
Google has launched a new effort to teach young students about some of the practical, real-world uses of AI -- and in the process, to normalize the technology among the next generation.
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AI Quests, a series of interactive online games, educates students between the ages of 11 and 14 about how Google is applying AI to address climate, health, and other scientific challenges. The company launched the series on Tuesday.
"It's our latest effort around AI literacy in classrooms, teaching the next generation to not only use the technology, but inspiring them with how they can use AI to make a positive impact on their world," Google wrote in a press release. The effort was developed by Google Research in collaboration with the Stanford Accelerator for Learning.
Each quest is set in a fantasy realm, and students can receive guidance from a virtual mentor named Dr. Skye. In the first quest, modeled on Google's Flood Forecasting research project, students are challenged to track variables like rainfall and river flow, and train an AI model, to help in-game characters make more accurate flood predictions.
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Two more quests -- one focused on the detection of an eye disease and the latter based on Google's brain-mapping research -- will launch in the coming months, according to Google.
Familiarizing a young audience with AI
"Move fast and break things" has long been Silicon Valley's reigning motto. Now, another unofficial credo seems to be emerging: "Teach 'em young."
As leading AI developers race to get their tools into the broadest possible swathe of consumers, they're increasingly turning their attention to students. It's not a new tactic: the tech industry (like many others) has always targeted a younger audience, which marketers tend to view as being both the frontline of shifting cultural trends and more receptive to radically new products than older generations.
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But this approach has been supercharged with the rise of AI, which tech developers are portraying as the operating system of the future. In some corners, this rhetoric has taken on existential overtones, with tech leaders warning that the US and Chinese AI companies like DeepSeek are locked in a race to build the technology that will determine the geopolitical order of the future.
This fuels intense competition among AI developers to win the loyalty of a younger audience. Google's new AI Quests effort is a perfect example. By gamifying AI, the company is aiming to transform the technology from an abstract concept into a pragmatic, habitual part of students' lives.
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Google also announced last month that it was giving college students across five countries free access to its AI Pro plan. Similar recent efforts from Perplexity, Grammarly, Anthropic, and OpenAI also aim to get students using their products and build habits that could persist long into the future.