The AI Timeline
Put the milestones of artificial intelligence back in order on a timeline, from the first artificial neurons to the AI Act, and what a fork can customise.
The player is the archivist of a bookbinding workshop that binds the history of artificial intelligence into a single volume. Each question is a chapter and each event a card (a linocut picture and a title): from the first artificial neurons and the Turing test to ChatGPT and the AI Act, the player puts the events of the chapter in order on a horizontal timeline, from the earliest to the most recent. A quiz played solo in 4 to 8 minutes.
Play it now, for free and without an account: the AI Timeline game page.
Rules
- A game binds 8 chapters drawn from the content (12 by default), balanced by skill, from the easiest to the hardest. Each chapter has 3 events by default.
- The cards wait in a drawer. The player places them on the brass timeline, moves them until the order looks right, then binds the chapter (the drawer must be empty).
- On binding, the reveal: a stamp prints the real date of each event, a misplaced card gets an "Erratum" label and slides to its true place, a scale of years under the timeline shows the gaps between the events, and the archivist's note tells the story that links them. A switch shows either the player's order or the right one.
- Hint, once per chapter: a clue about the order. It costs a bookmark, never a point of the grade.
- Timer per chapter, off by default (45 s when switched on): when time runs out, the cards left in the drawer are added at the right and the chapter is bound; a chapter with nothing placed counts as unanswered.
- The game keeps its own end screen: the bound volume, with its spine (one rib per chapter), the archivist's note, the bookmarks, the timeline of the whole game by era, and the skills acquired and to work on.
| Action | Mouse or touch | Keyboard |
|---|---|---|
| Place a card | drag it from the drawer onto the timeline (a copper pin shows where it lands), or tap the card then a "+" target | the chapter opens on the first card of the drawer: ← → choose a card, Space picks it up, ↑ goes to the timeline, ← → aim, Space drops it, Esc cancels |
| Move a placed card | drag it elsewhere on the timeline, or back to the drawer | Space, ← →, Space; ↓ or Backspace sends it back to the drawer; Alt + ← → moves it by one place |
| Bind the chapter | "Bind this chapter" | V |
| Hint | "Hint" | H |
| My order or the right order | the switch of the note | O |
| Next chapter | "Next chapter" | Enter |
With the Tab key, the timeline and the drawer are each a single stop (arrows move from one card to the next), then come "Bind this chapter" and "Hint"; each move is announced to screen readers.
The grade is the quiz: one point per chapter whose order is entirely right at the first try, out of eight, recomputed by the server from the answers (the platform's common quiz scoring). The pass mark (60% by default) is the one sent to the LMS. Bookmarks are game points, never in the grade: one per pair of neighbouring cards in the right order, two more for a fully right chapter, one less for an opened hint.
Skills measured
| Skill | Chapters |
|---|---|
ai.usage.good-fit: knowing when AI fits |
what AI learnt to do and when: the first neurons, machines against champions, deep learning, language, images, from an article to a tool |
data.leadership.ai-adoption: adopting AI responsibly |
booms and winters, rules in Europe (GDPR, AI Act), principles and summits that frame a technology that moves fast |
What a fork can customise
The editor of a fork has four spaces (Questions, Appearance and Rules, and Brand).
Questions: the chapters (their title, explanation, hint, skill and difficulty) and, for each
event, its title, its date (shown by the stamp at the reveal only; start it with the year
in four digits, such as "1966" or "1970s", for the scale of years) and its picture (replace
it, or "Back to the default"); add, remove or reorder chapters, and set
the draw. Every chapter must have exactly the number of events set by the rule
eventsPerQuestion: a draft that breaks it is refused, with the chapter at fault.
Rules:
| Rule | Default | Effect |
|---|---|---|
eventsPerQuestion |
3 | Events per chapter (3 to 5). |
hint |
on | One hint per chapter, which costs a bookmark. |
scaleOnReveal |
on | The scale of years under the timeline at the reveal. |
timer, timerSeconds |
off, 45 s | Timer per chapter (20 to 180 s). |
sessionDurationSeconds |
no timer | Maximum game length. |
passingScorePercent |
60 | Pass mark sent to the LMS. |
Appearance: every interface text (title page, instructions, buttons, announcements, note, end screen), in the fork's source language (other languages are translated with a file).
Brand: main, secondary, background, surface and text colours, font, corners and logo, applied live in the game, with the AA contrast checked as you choose. The logo shows on the title page and in the top band; the rail, the drawer, the parchment and the erratum keep the tones of the book. See where the brand applies.
Where it runs
The AI Timeline runs isolated in its own frame: its code and rendering run in a sandboxed
frame served by play.maketools.ai, with no access to the player's account, cookies or the rest
of the site; the platform keeps the session, the grade and the end of the game. On a network that
filters addresses, allow maketools.ai and play.maketools.ai (see
network access). In an LMS (SCORM 1.2 or 2004, inside the LMS page or in a
window), each chapter of the session comes through as an interaction and each skill as an
objective (LMS integration).
Review the content
The twelve chapters are listed with their events, dates, explanations and hints in
games/la-frise-de-l-ia/content-review.md (generated by bun run content:review in the game
package), in English and French. The dates were checked one by one against public references.