Towards an AI to Win Ghana's National Science and Maths Quiz

Abstract: Can an AI win Ghana's National Science and Maths Quiz (NSMQ)? That is the question we seek to answer in the NSMQ AI project, an open-source project that is building AI to compete live in the NSMQ and win. The NSMQ is an annual live science and mathematics competition for senior secondary school students in Ghana in which 3 teams of 2 students compete by answering questions across biology, chemistry, physics, and math in 5 rounds over 5 progressive stages until a winning team is crowned for that year. The NSMQ is an exciting live quiz competition with interesting technical challenges across speech-to-text, text-to-speech, question-answering, and human-computer interaction. In this ongoing work that began in January 2023, we give an overview of the project, describe each of the teams, progress made thus far, and the next steps toward our planned launch and debut of the AI in October for NSMQ 2023. An AI that conquers this grand challenge can have real-world impact on education such as enabling millions of students across Africa to have one-on-one learning support from this AI.