We decided to make our project about Neural Networks because we knew how Neural Networks are often thought as extremely complicated and impossible to understand, and while understanding a network from individual neuron states could be, building and understanding the layers of Neural Networks could be extremely useful in a world of AI.
Our Project is a game about building Neural Networks with various sequential tools. We have 10 levels, 5 of which are about making networks to match functions (ie y=sqrt(x+5)), and 5 of which are classification using the MNIST dataset and convolutional neural networks.
We built our project focusing on AI Libraries such as PyTorch and the GUI Library Tkinter. Our project was massively sped up by AI usage such as DeepSeek and ChatGPT - this weekend was the first time we used Tkinter!
The most clear challenges we ran into were the unavailability of AI tools. While we certainly can program, and could have programmed NexusGridX, without the usage of AI tools, utilizing AI allowed us to code at least twice as fast. It became a serious concern about how quickly our project would be completed without AI usage given our ambition for our first hackathon.
We are proud to have 10 levels utilizing both single I/O Neural Networks and Convolutional Classification Neural Networks. We expected that including both would be very difficult.
Over the weekend, we learned how to use Tkinter to build GUIs with Python and expanded our knowledge with PyTorch, but we also learned how to effectively utilize AI tools for programming to massively speed up the process, which allowed us to integrate all of the gameplay functionality we hoped to at the start of the hackathon.
After the hackathon ends, we would like to redesign the GUI of NexusGridX, add background and button sounds, and integrate tips into levels to better explain what each button and layer does. We would also love to add more levels about AI, such as recurrent neural networks and transformers!
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