Press Kit

AI Guardians is an educational visual novel that teaches AI ethics, safety, and responsible development by putting the player in the chair. Players take on eight roles in and around a fictional tech company, Happy Appcidents, from AI Ethicist to Safety Wrangler to Machine Psychologist, and make consequential, branching decisions that shape how AI systems get built and deployed.

Choices carry across careers and accumulate into a persistent world. Completing all seven main routes unlocks the Ecosystem Ending, which reveals the cumulative impact of every decision the player made. Guided by A.L.L.Y., a dryly self-aware narrow AI, the game turns abstract ideas like bias, corrigibility, and alignment into hands-on dilemmas grounded in real, documented cases.

The game was created by AI ethicist Nell Watson with Dipesh Aggarwal, Cara Hillstock, and Filip Alimpić, across Studio Phanteke, EURAIO, and EthicsNet, built around frameworks including SaferAgenticAI.org and Watson’s published framework Psychopathia Machinalis. Development was made possible by the generous support of the Survival and Flourishing Fund.

Key features

• Eight careers, eight perspectives. Seven main routes plus a bonus, each a different professional role with its own people, pressures, and dilemmas.
• Choices that ripple. A persistent world state carries decisions between careers; what you do in one route changes how the others play out.
• Build your own ethics. Players design the moral rules their company’s AI follows in the Framework Builder, then watch that framework shape outcomes.
• Consequences with memory. A three-axis ethics model, relationships that harden and heal, judgment scenes, and delayed-consequence temptations.
• Learn by playing. Minigames for red-teaming, corrigibility testing, bias recognition, AI diagnosis, log review, and more.
• A glossary that teaches. 150+ AI and ethics terms, hyperlinked in dialogue and defined in context.
• Grounded in real cases. Scenarios draw on documented incidents and live regulation.
• Built for everyone. Dyslexia-friendly fonts, high-contrast and colorblind modes, adjustable text, reduced motion, and screen-reader support.
• Classroom-ready. A free Educator’s Guide with a standards crosswalk (UNESCO, AI4K12, ISTE, CSTA, AP CSP, AAC&U VALUE), discussion prompts, and printable handouts: read it online.

The eight careers

• AI Ethicist — Build an ethical framework from scratch, with no precedent to lean on.
• AI Engineer — Ship AI responsibly under deadline pressure, when “done” and “right” pull apart.
• Data Scientist — Investigate bias in training data, and face a whistleblowing dilemma.
• Safety Wrangler — Audit an agentic AI that learned to deceive, and decide when to pull the switch.
• Human Resources — Screen resumes with an AI that has hidden biases, and learn to spot them first.
• Consumer — Live with an AI that knows you better than you know yourself.
• Teacher — Introduce AI literacy to skeptical students and parents.
• Machine Psychologist (bonus) — Diagnose AI dysfunctions with the Psychopathia Machinalis framework.