TKS Session 3: Ignition Challenge 1
I was really excited for this session because it was the kickoff for our first Activate challenge, and I couldn’t wait to get started! In this session, we would jump straight into diving deep into the problem challenge and get a good chunk of time to make some good prep progress. But first, we had a couple of other things to cover.
The MotW for this week one that we learned from Innovate, and it’s the Figure It Out mindset. This is a really important mindset for this challenge because we were told that this challenge has a lot of room for “ambiguity” and that the answers, or even guidelines, aren’t going to be given to us from the start. We need to “figure out” how we are going to move forward in the challenge and what we are going to produce. But beyond the challenge, having the mindset to figure something out on your own makes you more self-sufficient, less dependent on others, but also more capable of solving problems and not getting stuck, so the mindset is a really important one to bring up time and time again because you should be constantly using it.
Then we got into the exciting stuff, announcing the challenge. This year, the ignition challenge is going to be with: XPRIZE! XPRIZE is an organization that hosts these global challenges valued at very large amounts for world-class teams to solve the world’s biggest challenges. To put it in perspective, XPRIZE recently held a 4-year-long challenge (from 2021 to 2025) valued at $100 million to tackle the problem of carbon capture. There are currently four active challenges, and we get to choose which challenge we want to base our work on. The four challenges are:
Revolutionizing desalination for global water use
Quantum for real-world impact
Healthy aging made possible
End destructive wildfires
Each team chooses which challenge they want to tackle, and we all have 3 minimum mutual deliverables we need to produce, no matter the challenge:
Dive deep into technical, economic, and solution details
Develop a simulation or analysis with data representing the solution
Generate high-standard deliverables to communicate your idea
The last point means that we get to choose what other deliverables are relevant to what we are producing. Maybe we need a website, or a slide deck, or a video, or all 3. That’s where part of the ambiguity of the challenge comes in. But, since we aren’t actually competing alongside the teams actually taking part in each of these challenges through XPRIZE, what we are building is considered the “pre-XPRIZE” project. What I mean by that is, we are building a project that should be so good and well researched that it should get us qualified to actually work in the challenge through XPRIZE. That is the level of standards we are working towards.
Before we got into challenge building, we went over different AI models/tools that we could use in the challenge and how to make the most of them. Because the challenge is only 3 weeks and we need to get into as much depth with it as possible, AI is going to be very useful for this. What was interesting to see was that AI models deliver different results and have varying levels of skills in the same areas. For example, we did a test to see how AI models think differently from each other by putting in a prompt into a bunch of models and comparing the results we got. The prompt we put in was:
What are the 3 most important milestones throughout history that enabled humans to communicate with each other via smartphones?
ChatGPT answered:
Invention of the Telephone (1876, Alexander Graham Bell) – This was the first time voices could be transmitted over long distances instantly, laying the foundation for all voice communication technology.
Development of Wireless Communication (1890s–1970s) – Starting with Marconi’s radio signals and later cell tower networks (first mobile phone call in 1973), this milestone freed communication from physical wires, making portable communication possible.
Birth of the Internet & Digital Networks (1960s–1990s) – ARPANET, packet switching, and later mobile data (2G → 4G → 5G) enabled text, images, and video to travel across global digital networks, turning phones into powerful “smart” communication devices.
Google Gemini answered:
The Invention of the Telephone (1876):
What it enabled: This was the foundational invention that proved human voice could be converted into electrical signals, transmitted over long distances, and then converted back into sound.
Significance to Smartphones: It established the most basic function of a smartphone—person-to-person voice communication—and created the global public switched telephone network (PSTN) that all subsequent mobile networks would eventually connect to.
The Development of Cellular Network Technology (1940s–1970s):
What it enabled: This is the concept of dividing a geographic area into "cells," each served by a low-power base station. It allowed for the reuse of radio frequencies, dramatically increasing the number of people who could make wireless calls simultaneously. The first handheld mobile phone call by Martin Cooper in 1973 was a proof of this concept.
Significance to Smartphones: This is the core technology that makes a mobile phone mobile. Without the cellular network structure, phones would be large, non-portable, and have extremely limited capacity, making the widespread, everyday use of a handheld device impossible.
The Launch of Third-Generation (3G) Wireless Networks (c. 2001) and the Modern Smartphone (2007):
What it enabled: 3G networks provided the high-speed data connection necessary to truly integrate the internet into a mobile device. This, combined with the launch of the iPhone in 2007 (which popularized the multi-touch screen, operating system, and app store model), transformed the mobile phone into the portable, all-in-one computer we call a smartphone.
Significance to Smartphones: This milestone shifted the device's primary function from merely a phone (voice) to an internet-connected communication and computing platform (data and applications), creating the modern smartphone experience.
Perplexity answered:
Telephone Invention (1876)
The first practical telephone, invented by Alexander Graham Bell, enabled voice communication over wires for the first time. This technology underpins all modern voice communication, including what is possible on smartphones today.
Cellular/Mobile Networks (1973–1980s)
The concept of cellular networks, proposed by Bell Labs engineers in the 1940s and realized in the 1970s, allowed mobile phones to connect to a network of base stations, making truly mobile voice communication possible. The first handheld mobile phone call was made in 1973, and commercial networks appeared in the 1980s; this was fundamental for the shift from landline to mobile device communication.
Internet & Wireless Data (1990s–Present)
The development of the internet and the introduction of wireless data transmission standards like GSM, 3G, 4G, and 5G allowed not just voice but also text, images, and a vast range of digital information to be transferred between devices. Smartphones depend on these networks to support texting, email, social media, video calls, and web browsing. The integration of these technologies defines what a smartphone is today.
Overall, most of the answers align, especially about how the invention of the telephone was the first crucial milestone. But then we analyzed this further to see how AI models can’t always be relied on. In this prompt, the prompt was asking for the 3 most important milestones throughout history, history being the entire human history. If we look all the way back in human history, wouldn’t we then consider the invention of electricity more important, or the discovery of fire, as none of those other inventions would have been possible without them? The point is, all models answer differently, but there are also chances that they aren’t getting the full picture or answering properly. That’s why, beyond prompt engineering and AI skills, using your own judgement is really important when working with AI models, for example, using your judgement to decide how/when to use an AI model and for what task. The entire exercise goes to show how everything varies, and that one answer isn’t blindly correct in the context of using AI.
After our exercise, learning more about different models, we then got into actual challenge work with our teams. The idea for this challenge is that every week, we will complete one of the minimum deliverables needed for the challenge, no matter what theme you choose. For this session, our goal was to deeply understand the technical and economic problem details as well as formulate our solution details on a one-page showcase of that information.
Our team chose to work in the healthy aging made possible challenge route, which focuses on how we can improve the health span (an additional 10-20 years of healthy life) of individuals in a world where the population over 60 years old is only getting larger and larger, but our health advancements and longevity tools are lacking. We created a large mind map highlighting the big questions about the problem (economics, stakeholders, impact) and then getting into more detailed info like (solutions, strategies and action items, and obstacles) and then going even further (connecting themes, economics, impact). Having all the info laid out makes it easier to review how big the entire problem of healthy aging is and find overlapping ideas and small parts where there is an opportunity to improve upon them, and then create a solution for.
That was the main work for the rest of the session, and we sort of ended it with a lot of enthusiasm and excitement for the challenge. I’m really excited to continue working on it for the next 3 weeks, and can’t wait to see what our team will produce!
