Aberdeen Science Centre Events Review
In February and March 2026, the Maddie is Online team visited Aberdeen Science Centre for interactive, youth‑focused engagement events exploring AI hallucinations, bias, prompt engineering and the differences between AI and human generated art. The sessions brought together young people and families for a hands‑on experience designed to spark curiosity and build confidence in navigating the essentials of AI literacy.
The sessions combined short demonstrations, guided discussions and playful activities inspired by the Maddie is Online series 5 storyline.
At the Aberdeen Science Centre setting we created an energetic atmosphere, encouraging young people to experiment, ask questions and connect the fictional world of our series with their AI related experiences. The event also provided an opportunity for families to engage with evidence‑based resources we co-created with students at schools. Overall, the event strengthened community engagement around digital literacy when using AI and showcased how creative storytelling can make complex online issues accessible, relatable and empowering.
As part of these sessions, we offered three games:
1. Bias Busters Hallucination Hunters
It is an interactive game that helps people spot and challenge different types of bias and hallucination in AI systems. Participants are shown examples of AI outputs, drawn from our project's real empirical data, based on activities with young people (13 years old) who were tasked with creating AI generated images on UN sustainable goals, such as poverty, climate change and clean water.
What it teaches:
• How to recognise bias and hallucinations in AI generated images.
• How bias enters AI systems (e.g., by data or design) and how and why AI models produce incorrect or fabricated information.
• Why certain groups may be misrepresented or excluded and how and why AI models produce incorrect or fabricated information.
• How to think critically about “neutral” technology.
• Practical strategies for recognising and questioning biased outputs and hallucinations.
This game is fast paced, discussion driven and great for building digital literacy and critical thinking. It also offers a fun way to build healthy scepticism and fact checking habits.
2. Bot or Not Bot
This is a guessing game where players try to determine whether a sentence that is half finished was created by a human or an AI system.
What it teaches:
• How AI mimics human communication.
• What makes human expression unique.
• How to spot subtle patterns in AI generated content.
• The limits and strengths of generative models It’s playful, surprising and often sparks great conversations about authenticity and creativity.
3. The Great Art Guess Off
This is a visual challenge where players look at artworks and guess whether they were created by a human artist or generated by an AI tool. The game also explores the style or inspiration behind some of the included art pieces, as explained by the real artists who created them.
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What it teaches:
• How AI generates images and imitates artistic styles.
• The difference between human intention and algorithmic patterns.
• Visual literacy skills.
• The ethics of AI art (ownership, originality, training data).
It is energetic, competitive and perfect for sparking discussions about creativity in the age of AI.
Parallel to these sessions we also organised online lessons with international participants that involved critical discussion and quizzes to test their knowledge.
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