June 14 Human-AI Trivia Competition at the University of Maryland

[Jordan Boyd-Graber Ying]

Apologies for the spam!  We are researchers at the University of Maryland running a human-computer trivia competition on June 14, and we've had trouble getting people to sign up (our signup deadline is today; we're willing to be flexible, but we need to make a go/no go decision tomorrow).   If you're interested, it would be great to see you come out.  But I suspect you also know people in the DMV area who would be interested.  If you could pass this on, I'd really appreciate it. If you prefer to signal boost on social media (thanks!), the relevant posts are: https://x.com/boydgraber/status/1932472876479009125 https://www.facebook.com/share/p/16YgHFQsiM/ https://bsky.app/profile/boydgraber.bsky.social/post/3lrbcj2vmls22 Details! (Copied from https://sites.google.com/view/qanta/2025-competition/2025-human-teams) How this Works It's always difficult to try something new, but we think this will be fun! Short Version: You'll play multiple rounds of tossup-bonus quiz bowl with computer teammates.  The computer can buzz on the tossups, and will provide guesses on the bonuses.  You'll need to decide whether or not to trust the answers from the computer. Medium Version: We'll have multiple rounds (themed), and at the start of each round you'll get to choose your AI teammate(s).  Because the teams with the worst records will go first, this will make the matches accessible even to less skilled players.  The computers teammates will be on your team, buzzing in on tossups (make sure you don't choose computers who neg!) and offering help on bonuses.  However, the human will decide of the final bonus answer, rewarding both trivia knowledge and the ability to see through computer BS. Long Version: We will mostly adopt ACF Rules, with exceptions outlined in this document (it's long, but if you want to know how it works, it's worth looking over).

Where The in-person tournament will happen at the University of Maryland (accessible via the Green line) and the online tournament will be held via Zoom and BuzzIn.Live.

When The in-person tournament will happen on June 14, 2025, and the online tournament will be on June 21, 2025.  The in-person tournament will start at 10:00 and the online tournament will start at 12:00.

Why Simultaneously, this is also a competition for computers: the computer that best helps the human team will win the computer side of the competition.  So we're rewarding not just the ability of computers to get questions right but to explain why they chose a particular answer to human teammates (or decide to abstain).  The human teams in this tournament will help us crown a computer winner.

What

Each of the rounds will be themed, with questions specially designed to stump computers.  So they'll be a little odd.  Some of the themes that we have are:

1. Music

2. Spatial Reasoning

3. Military History

4. World Literature

5. Canadian History

Even if you see a theme that seems scary, you'll have an AI to help you!

Fees There is no cost to play, and there are prizes for doing well in the tournament:  The top team at each mirror will receive $150 second place will receive $100 and third place $50 The rating of teams will be determined by overall record.  We will play off ties at the buzzer if at all possible, and ties will be broken by points per game.

Sign Up Please sign up to play (deadline June 10, 2025).