Escape game about machine learning

More than 40 visitors played the escape game “Evade the Machines” from 22 – 26 March 2022 at the Luxembourg Learning Centre.

The game takes visitors to Luxembourg in 2071, where SMART Artificial Intelligence took over local political authorities. Players had up to one hour to solve four different challenges in order to uncover the prowess and limitations of SMART, thereby learning more about applications like voice and face recognition.

Evade the Machines was developed by Salah Ghamizi a doctoral researcher from the SerVal group of the Interdisciplinary Centre for Security, Reliability and Trust (SnT) at the University of Luxembourg, with the support of Yuejun Guo and Salijona Dyrmishi, also from the SerVal group. “I am very interested in gamified exhibitions and have already designed escape games and treasure hunts before”, says Salah Ghamizi. “In Evade the Machines, I wanted to bring concepts of Machine Learning (ML) and Artificial Intelligence (AI) closer to the public, raise awareness about vulnerability of AI, and how to beat it. Our research group has gained recognition in AI with contributions in top ML venues and my aim was to introduce our research in AI and Security to a variety of audiences.”

The challenges of Evade the Machines helped visitors grasp concepts like deep learning in a playful manner by mimicking facial expressions, challenging voice recognition systems, cracking codes and solving puzzles. Everyone who missed the opportunity can play a slightly restricted online version of the game via the following link: https://yamizi.github.io/LLCEscapeGame/

The escape game was developed under supervision from Jonathan England of the Luxembourg Learning Centre (LLC) in the context of a science communication internship. “Learning through games is probably my favourite way of keeping people motivated and engaged in a subject”, says Jonathan England. “Trying new learning techniques is very important to a lot of us librarians at the LLC. So we were overjoyed when Salah reached out to us to organise an escape game, and I hope we can organise more of these interactive activities in the future!”

The LLC is one of 15 partners that offer hands-on science communication trainings of up to two weeks for doctoral candidates in Luxembourg in the context of a science communication internship organized by the Doctoral Education in Science Communication (DESCOM) project.

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DESCOM is supported by the Luxembourg National Research Fund (FNR). The project aims to support interactions between academia and the public by providing different modes of training in science communication as well as organising and supporting outreach activities.