I didn’t attend the AI for Social Impact hackathon recently held in San Francisco. However, I geek out for these type of things.

AI expedites innovation. While big tech dominates around what one can do on a massive scale, AI has opened the door for the average person with savvy and some AI knowledge to help alleviate poverty or fix the food supply challenges.

Hack for Social Impact article

The article mentions a couple of developers who joined last year’s competition not knowing each other. They ended up winning a hackathon prize and subsequently proposed their idea towards affordable housing to Y-Combinator. They got accepted and have built a company which raised venture capital: https://www.bild.ai/blog/time-to-bild

There’s never been a better time for social entrepreneurship and doing things that solve real world problems, not merely improve productivity and profits. AI should be trained to not leave humans behind.

The hackathon platform needs wider adoption in the public sector.