AI Battle Royale - 5 teams, 1 crisis, 45 minutes to briefing!
AI Battle Royale
Welcome to the AI Battle Royale - a high-stakes, 2-hour analytical workshop designed to test the limits of both human intellect and artificial intelligence.
The Setup We are gathering 20 to 30 participants and splitting them into 5 competing teams of 4 to 6 people. Each team will be assigned a completely different analytical toolkit. These toolsets will range across the spectrum of modern analysis: from traditional, manual baseline methods to advanced, structured AI pipelines.
Please bring a laptop you can use public AI tools on!
The Challenge
The Scenario: Project Horizon
Project Horizon is a $1.2 billion Commonwealth digital identity platform - eighteen months behind schedule, $400 million over budget, and now the subject of a Senate inquiry.
Your team will receive a unified corpus of hundreds of pages spanning government briefs, Senate Estimates transcripts, ANAO audit findings, industry lobbying papers, think-tank research, professional profiles, conference programmes, Senate inquiry submissions and more.
It is intentionally designed to be far too large for any single person to read within the time limit.
Your team has exactly 45 minutes to work through six structured analytical questions and synthesize the chaos into a clear, 3-minute verbal brief. You will deliver this brief directly to an expert judge acting as the "Minister".
The Stakes
You aren't just racing the clock; you are competing against the other methodologies. The judge will score each team on:
Completeness: Did you cover the critical risk areas?
Structure: Is the brief logically organized with clear priorities?
Evidence: Are you citing specific sources, or just going off vibes?
Insight: Did you surface non-obvious connections that required cross-document analysis?
Following the showdown, we will hold a structured debrief to uncover the reality of these different approaches. We’ll discuss where the tools saved time, where teams got frustratingly stuck, and what surprised us all the most.
Will the most advanced AI win, or will traditional analytical grit carry the day? Join a team, choose your weapons, and find out.