By Kenji Saito | Representative Director
Please find a Japanese version of this report here.
From May 2 to 5, during Japan’s major holiday period known as Golden Week, we once again held a camp at Waseda University where children could play with AI. Reimagining “GW” as “Generative Week,” this four-day camp brought together 13 children (from 4th grade elementary school to 3rd year high school) from the Tohoku, Kanto, and Kansai regions. Together with AI, they explored questions that interested them, conducted research, wrote papers, and presented the papers as posters.
In two senses, they “front-loaded” their work. One sense was that they carried out “free research” — a typical Japanese schools' summer vacation assignment — already in May. The other sense was that they experienced, here and now, what will likely become commonplace in the future: humans and AI collaboratively engaging in intellectual production.
On day 1, the children were introduced to an AI tutor and a “research game.” Yes — the children played research as a game! Divided into six groups, they began by interacting with the AI tutor to formulate research questions.
On day 2, each group dispersed across different parts of Tokyo to collect primary data. Half of the groups even worked together with AI to create apps for data collection that ran on the distributed tablet devices, and then used those apps in the field.
On day 3, the children analyzed the collected data and drafted papers with the AI tutor. In this game-like framing of research, the victory condition was to receive at least a “weak accept” evaluation from all three anonymous NPC (non-player character) reviewers. The children refined their analyses and papers as they worked toward clearing the game.
On day 4, all camp participants convened as an editorial committee to review one another’s papers. Afterwards, they finalized their papers (and, of course, cleared the game), and presented their work in poster format.
As a result, six research papers were produced. Each tackled an intriguing question: “Can changes in human emotion be tracked using video recording and AI?” “How are Tokyo’s historical buildings being preserved?” “Why do people differ in their preference for packaged versus bulk candy?” “How is comfort in cities determined by the balance between nature and convenience?” “Do topographical conditions such as slopes affect the density of utility poles?” “Do larger pond snails move more actively?” — Considering the short duration of the investigation period, it can be said that the participants achieved meaningful results.
But perhaps even more important than the individual research results was what everyone gained collectively: the experience of enjoying research — a highly sophisticated form of intellectual production — as a game, long before going to university.
Several of the children seemed to become especially fond of the “game” of research, asking how they could continue doing it even after returning home. An entry point into an exploratory mindset — if AI tools and the camp environment helped provide that, it would be something we are truly happy about.
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By Kenji Saito | Representative Director
By Kenji Saito | Representative Director
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