Elon’s new “AI Play” camp teaches artificial intelligence through classic games
Elon’s new “AI Play” camp teaches artificial intelligence through classic games
Publish Date: 2026-06-18 07:22:00
Source Domain: www.wxii12.com
A group of campers at Elon University is learning the basics of artificial intelligence this week through a series of classic games.Our team watched as kids learned how to think like a computer through a competitive tournament of tic-tac-toe, with a twist.In groups, their task was to write a set of instructions that they had to follow word for word, to compete against peers in a tick-tac-toe tournament. Campers are playing these games as part of a camp, new to Elon University, called, ‘AI Play’.Camp director, Alex Goslen says the goal of playing games like tic-tac-toe, is to teach kids problem-solving skills, AI coding, literacy, and ethics.“It’s a fixed game meaning that is already solved, and there’s only a certain possible number of combinations of x’s and o’s that you can draw. So a computer can play it pretty well,” Goslen said.Goslen says this makes it a great game to get kids to start to think like a computer.“That’s kind of core component of artificial intelligence, especially in like the early forms of it back in the day, writing clear instructions that a computer could follow to make decisions about something,” Goslen explained.This is the first group of campers that Goslen is testing this curriculum on. She said she worked with a group of researchers at North Carolina State University developed some of the tools used at the camp. Goslen said it is important to introduce these kids to the basics of AI because they are exposed to it in their everyday lives.”The cool thing is to get them to understand how those technologies are working,” she said, “Then they could maybe decide what they want to do with it and make informed decisions about it.”
BURLINGTON, N.C. —
A group of campers at Elon University is learning the basics of artificial intelligence this week through a series of classic games.
Our team watched as kids learned how to think like a computer through a competitive tournament of tic-tac-toe,…
