Google, Stanford launch Polar Peaks AI literacy quest

AI Quests is a series created by Google Research and the Stanford Accelerator for Learning to teach students how AI works and how to use it responsibly. The first two quests focused on flood forecasting and eye disease detection, drawing on Google's Flood Forecasting initiative and its AI model for diabetic retinopathy screening. "Polar Peaks" shifts to neuroscience, having students scan and map neurons to understand a game character's memory loss while completing tasks like data cleaning and model testing. The quest draws on more than a decade of Google's connectomics research, and upon completion students hear from two researchers behind real-world breakthroughs, including the recent mapping of the complete fruit fly brain. More than 400,000 quests have been completed to date, localized to 10 languages. Alongside the new lesson, Google is rolling out dedicated teacher training modules within the Google AI Educator Series, with the module for Quest #3 to follow next month. Earlier this year, AI Quests won a 2026 Webby Award for AI Education, Learning & Training, and Best Global K–12 Learning Solution at the ETIH Innovation Awards.