#40. Beyond the Zombie Apocalypse: Three More AI Experiments
Last November, I wrote about what happened when I put a small group of Grade 6 boys in a room with an AI voice simulation and told them zombies were coming. They barricaded the door. They asked about supplies - food, water and AK47s (naturally). They knew it was a simulation, a game. They were laughing and chuckling quite a lot. And as ESL students they forgot they were speaking English. They proved that a machine could bypass the "translation freeze" that keeps Hong Kong students locked in Cantonese during stress. That post — How AI Voice Mode Simulations Can Turn English Lessons into Real-Time Language Challenges — covered the simulation activities in detail. But that was only part of the story. The Adventures in AI group at PBPS has run for the full school year in 2025-26. Forty Grade 4–6 students. Weekly sessions with small groups of 4-6 students. And while the various AI voice-mode simulations such as Zombie Apocalypse and Tutor Susan were the headline-grabbers, the qui...