SINGAPORE – Participants rose to the challenge of developing innovative solutions to address today’s most challenging issues such as fake news and terrorism, at the 12th edition of the annual hackathon Code::XtremeApps::.
The hackathon’s theme, “Changing our world with AI”, challenged the participants to develop artificial intelligence solutions that can improve lives and the environment. Singapore’s longest-running hackathon saw 332 participants form 122 teams to develop solutions to make Singapore an even better place to work, live, learn and play.
The efforts of Francis Yeo Zhao Yik, Zhao Fengye and Jeffrey Lau Wei Yang from the winning team Artificial Idiot in the Open category, paid off handsomely for the trio, who walked away with cash prizes worth a total of $9000. Teams DefinitelyHappenStance and Charcoal Leaf took the top spots in the categories of School and Junior respectively, winning attractive electronic gadgets.
In addition to the top three prizes for each category, a Merit Award in the School category was awarded to team Cheat Codes for their creditable effort creating an innovative solution for data visualisation.
The winning solutions of the top teams include improving disaster relief efforts and day to day structural inspections through the use of data and algorithms to map transport routes that can enable first responders to travel safely through the disaster area; detecting fake Twitter posts; and a virtual and auditory monitoring of babies using a pre-trained deep learning model to predict the reasons for baby cries and the appropriate responses.
Code::XtremeApps:: 2018’s challenge statements were contributed by Motorola Solutions, NVIDIA, and MicroStrategy in addition to the organising committee. They include:
- AI empowered applications to assist and improve daily lives in areas of Education, Healthcare, Environment, Personal Help or Home
- Data visualisation
- Intelligent enterprises
- Public health and safety
- Spotting fake news
- Smart chatbots
Teams were assessed according to how well challenge statements were addressed, the value and impact of the applications to end-users and their technical features. Solutions with the potential to be commercially viable may receive funding to develop the ideas further.
Mr Leong Keng Thai, Deputy Chief Executive of IMDA said: “The quality of projects and passion shown by the participants never ceases to amaze. I am especially heartened to see the enthusiasm and inspired design thinking of young minds in the Junior and School categories. The hackathon is a good platform for budding and current developers to share and learn more, raising the digital literacy of the community to take on the challenges of the digital economy, and I hope to see more budding young thinkers join us at next year’s event.”