The AI League
Four rounds, January to April. Play for your school chapter, or on your own.
- Rounds
- 4
- Divisions
- 2
- Brackets
- 3
- Code to start
- None
- Cost
- Free
The season
How a season goes
Step 1
Enter
Registration opens September 8 and closes January 15. Play for your chapter, or as an independent.
Step 2
Play three rounds
January, February, March. Each is a short quiz and a practical, scored on the file you upload. Any tool you like, except AI help once the timer starts.
Step 3
Get a bracket
After Round 2 your points sort you into Platinum, Gold, Silver. From then on you are ranked against similar scores.
Step 4
Finals
April, by invitation. The top of every bracket in each division, plus one wildcard per state.
Two ways to enter. Same rounds, same scoring.
Represent your school chapter
Your name and your chapter's name go on the leaderboard, and your points count toward the chapter total. No chapter at your school yet? Starting one takes a form.
Start a chapterEnter as an independent
No school, club, or sponsor needed. You play the same rounds, sit in the same brackets, and get the same finals invitations. Create an account and follow the competition rules.
Start Level 1The calendar
Four rounds, January to April
Round n covers Level n. Each round is a three day window, and you pick your own slot inside it.
- 1
Is It AI, and Is It Right?
Jan 22 to 24
Fri to Sun
No code needed
Quiz 100 pts · 25 min
Practical 200 pts · 90 min
300 pts
1h 55m
January 22 to 24, 2027
Level 1: AI literacy, no code
How AI works
100 pts · 25 min
Twenty five questions on what makes something AI, how a chatbot answers, what training does, and where bias comes from.
Human or AI
200 pts · 90 min
Sixty short items, some written or drawn by a model and some not. Decide for each one and upload your labels.
Scored on: Accuracy against a hidden answer key. No penalty for a wrong guess, so answer all 60.
- Your own judgement
- Paper and pen
- A spreadsheet
Prepare with Level 1: How AI works, and how to use it. Finish Level 1. About six hours, and it covers every question type in the quiz.
- 2
Train Something
Feb 19 to 21
Fri to Sun
No code needed
Quiz 100 pts · 25 min
Practical 300 pts · 180 min
400 pts
3h 25m
February 19 to 21, 2027
Level 2: build a dataset and train a classifier, still no code
Data and training
100 pts · 25 min
Twenty five questions on training examples, labels, test sets, class imbalance, and reading a result honestly.
Image classifier
300 pts · 180 min
Train on about 1200 labelled photos in five categories, then label our 200 hidden test images and upload the file.
Scored on: Accuracy on 200 hidden test images, reported within about a minute of upload.
- Teachable Machine
- Machine Learning for Kids
- A spreadsheet
- Python
Prepare with Level 2: Train your first model. Finish Level 2 and train at least one classifier of your own from start to finish.
- 3
Inside the Model
Mar 19 to 21
Fri to Sun
A spreadsheet or Scratch
Quiz 100 pts · 30 min
Practical 400 pts · 180 min
500 pts
3h 30m
March 19 to 21, 2027
Level 3: lines, loss, and weighted votes. First round scored inside your bracket.
Loss, learning rate, and fair testing
100 pts · 30 min
Thirty questions on slope and intercept, mean squared error by hand, learning rate, validation sets, and baselines.
Predict the missing column
400 pts · 180 min
A table of about 400 ordinary rows with one answer column. Find the pattern, then predict that column for 150 hidden rows.
Scored on: Mean absolute error against the hidden column, converted to points on a published scale. Guessing the average still scores something.
- A spreadsheet
- Scratch
- Python
- Pencil and paper
Prepare with Level 3: Build things with AI. Finish Level 3. If you can fit a line in a spreadsheet and say whether its error got better or worse, you are ready.
- 4
Finals: Build It and Explain It
Level 4Invitation onlyApr 9 to 11
Fri to Sun
Python
Quiz 150 pts · 30 min
Practical 600 pts · 240 min
750 pts
4h 30m
April 9 to 11, 2027
Level 4: Python, scikit-learn, and a handwritten digit classifier. Invitation only.
Models, metrics, and honest testing
150 pts · 30 min
Thirty questions on load, split, fit, predict, score, reading a confusion matrix, and why tuning on the test set is cheating.
Handwritten digit classifier
600 pts · 240 min
Train on 8000 labelled digit images, then upload your predicted digit for each of 2000 hidden test images.
Scored on: Accuracy on 2000 hidden test images, with no live score until the window closes. The top ten per bracket then send a one page method writeup, and a judge reads it before placings are final.
- Python and scikit-learn
- Google Colab
- Teachable Machine
Prepare with Level 4: Python, and your own handwritten digit classifier. Finish Level 4 and run the load, split, fit, predict, score workflow at least twice on data that is not from the lesson.
Rounds 1 to 3 add up to a season total of 1200 points. The finals are invitation only and sit outside that total.
Who you are ranked against
Two divisions, three brackets
Divisions are scored separately. A bracket is a skill group, not a stage: it decides who you are ranked against, never whether you keep playing.
Middle School
Grades 6 to 8Finals invite the top 60% of each bracket.
High School
Grades 9 to 12Finals invite the top 25% of each bracket.
- PlatinumTop 30% after Round 230% of the field
Round 3 and the finals are scored against the other Platinum players.
- GoldMiddle 40% after Round 240% of the field
The largest bracket. You are ranked against the players closest to you.
- SilverBottom 30% after Round 230% of the field
Its own Round 3 ranking and its own finals invitations. Not a penalty box.
The details
The rules
One PDF covers the whole season, all 14 rules of it. Here is what is inside, and what happens if one of them is broken.
Read it once before Round 1.
What it covers
Entering, 4 rules
Which division your grade puts you in, one account per player, participation rules, and what we never publish.
During a round, 7 rules
When AI help stops, what a predictions file has to look like, and how many times you may upload one.
Scoring, 3 rules
How points add up into a bracket, how a tie is broken, and what the top ten send in after the finals.
If a rule is broken: A first breach usually voids one round. A deliberate one ends your season.
Questions
Common questions
No. Rounds 1 to 3 need no code: judgement, then a point and click trainer, then a spreadsheet or Scratch. Only the April finals expect Python, and Level 4 teaches it from scratch.