Quick Draw with the Exults Team

The internet is full of distractions. As I was typing the first sentence to this blog, I got sucked into the Buzzfeed Quiz “What % Draco Malfoy Are You?”

For the record, I’m 53% and I’m upset about it. 

Luckily, Google provides us with worthwhile distractions like news about self-driving cars, innovative gadgets, and one of their latest projects AI Experiments.

What the heck is Google’s AI Experiments?

Artificial intelligence (AI) is the future, and Google wants you to participate. AI Experiments is a site where you can play games that showcase machine learning. It’s also a site where coders can submit their own experiments for others to play around with. All the code is open source to make it easier for new games to be built.

Google explains it best in their informational video on the project…

So, what is Google’s Quick Draw all about?

Quick Draw is a game where you try to draw an object on your screen in under 20 seconds and the AI tries to guess it. It showcases machine learning with images. Over time the AI learns from previous doodles to correctly guess the object. This is the same vein of technology that is able to guess people’s faces in your photos or correctly identify objects in pictures.

Here’s how you play…

Step 1: Head to the Quick Draw page

Step 2: Hit “Let’s Draw”, and doodle whatever it asks you to draw.

Step 3: Repeat a total of 6 times

Step 4: After your results show up, click on any result

Step 5: See how and why the AI guessed what it guessed

It’s fascinating, scary, fun, and educational all the same time!

And if you think that you’re a terrible doodler and the AI will never guess… trust me, you’re wrong. Below is proof that terrible doodles don’t matter. This is one of my sessions with the Quick Draw, sped up. 

Why this is important?

AI’s can process, store, and analyze large amounts of data much faster than humans. By improving machine learning, we speed up the progress of AI.

Whether it’s your search results, Netflix recommendations, or translating software that helps you communicate with someone in China without knowing a lick of Mandarin, AIs help make the world around us more efficient and relevant.

How’d the Exults team do

I fully encourage you to play around with Quick Draw, but before you do, take a look at our team’s doodles. Some were better than others. Some were more inadvertently hilarious than others :-p

Chad, Search Specialist that has somehow caused me nightmares with his arm drawing

Danielle, Director of Operations that got real lucky with that “crocodile” drawing

Libby, Design Specialist who has apparently discovered hell’s unicorn

Lydia, Engagement Specialist who clearly needs to integrate asparagus into her diet

Nick, Lead Designer who could’ve done better if he wasn’t distracted by listening to ESPN New York 98.7 while playing

Romayne, SEO Director who yelled at his computer screen when the AI couldn’t guess the pineapple (I mean, come on)

Tony, Creative Director Cheater

How’d you do? Let us know in the comment section below.