STAI CDT PhD students Nathan Schneider Gavenski, Michelle Nwachukwu, Jack Contro and Stefan Roesch, took part in the King’s Festival of Artificial Intelligence with their demonstration, ‘Super Mario Bros: The Turing Quest’.
The demonstration was a chance to explore how humans perceive human and AI behaviour. As Nathan explained, “The demo was a Turing test (where a participant has to figure out whether they are interacting with AI or a human) for the Super Mario Bros game. The idea was that one participant watches a video of someone playing Mario while another plays the game. After a level of the game, the first participant had to guess whether it was the other participant that they were watching or an AI. As part of the demo, the team then asked the participant to explain why they think so and then revealed whether they were right or wrong”.
Taking part in the festival was an opportunity for Nathan, Michelle, Jack and Stefan to engage with both adults and children and explore people’s views and expectations of AI. Nathan said, “Some people came expecting AI to be perfect, but others, when they watched AI play the game, thought that AI wouldn’t be that good at it, which was not what we imagined.” They were also interested to see that some children were may more advanced in programming and AI than they were at the same age.
The King’s Festival of AI was an exciting opportunity for students to engage in public engagement activities. Nathan is keen to take part again next year and said, “Talking to a public that is not PhD students and King’s academics is a great opportunity to expose ourselves to new ideas and gain different perspectives on our research. I enjoyed last year’s festival and this year’s even more. I hope the festival can keep on going!”.
You can read more about their demonstration here. We also encourage you to keep up to date with the King’s Institute for Artificial Intelligence which highlights AI across King’s College London and organised the King’s Festival of AI.