Right-Size
Eight everyday jobs, four tools, one energy budget. Match each job to the right-sized tool, from a calculator to a large model to a person, then run the queue and see what happened.
How to play
- Read each job, then pick a tool: a rule or calculator, a small model, a large model, or a person.
- Watch the meters. Machine tools cost energy units, and a person costs an hour of their limited time.
- Run the queue to see which jobs went well, which went badly, and which were not the tool's call.
- Change any tool and run again. Retries are free, and every queue has a right-sized answer.
- Tab moves between jobs, and the arrow keys move between tools.
What it teaches
Bigger is not always better. Matching the tool to the task is a skill: a calculator beats a large model at sums, a small model sorts and spots things for a fraction of the energy, and a large model earns its cost on long reading and writing. Whether a tool can do a job and whether it should be the one deciding are different questions, and decisions about people belong with people. Computing also has a physical cost, even when nobody sees it.
For educators
The energy units are invented for the game and are not real measurements. A good follow-up is to ask students what they can find out about the real energy and water behind the AI tools they use, and who publishes that information.