AI Innovation Corner - Google AI Studio

Started in the 2023-2024 season, Tech Tips are segments released in the FIRST Tech Challenge Team E-mail Blast. Sometimes the Tech Tips are included in whole in the email blast, but sometimes there is more content than is reasonable in the email blast so partial content is included in the blast with the rest of the content here.

This Tech Tip launches a new initiative in FIRST Tech Challenge, an AI Innovation Corner. Generative AI has taken the world by storm, becoming commonplace now in everything from personal assistants, search engines, recipe curation, music innovation, and vehicle maintenance! Machine Learning AI has been a part of FIRST Tech Challenge in some way for the past six years, and we’re now transitioning to help teams learn how to use and incorporate Generative AI in their FIRST Tech Challenge experience (while we’re learning ourselves!).

The first step (or FIRST step?) to getting the most out of AI is choosing a model. What do I mean by model? Every AI is a neural network that has been trained with specific knowledge with the ability to do specific things based on that knowledge. Each version of this neural network is stored in a “model”. Each different company has different models available for different purposes, though most models are variations on their flagship model (Gemini from Google, ChatGPT from OpenAI, Claude from Anthropic, and so on). Each company has different web-based and API interfaces for interacting with their models, and everyone has their favorite. In FIRST Tech Challenge, the standard tool we use is Google AI Studio to interact with Gemini.

Google AI Studio is free to use, but requires a Google account to access - virtually all models require a login or API token of some kind to use. Google AI Studio is our favorite for its list of examples (Prompt Gallery) and its easy to use interface to save prompt sessions and resume them later. With Google AI Studio, you also can select the specific model you want to use, and when available you can choose to use preview versions of up and coming models.

Future AI articles are released not under the “Tech Tip of the Week” headline but under the “AI Innovation Corner” headline - you can find them on the AI Innovation Corner page on ftc-docs.

Got any questions about using AI in FIRST Tech Challenge? Come start or join the conversation on the FTC Community Forums!