The BWKI Hackathon

What do young people think?

The Federal Competition on Artificial Intelligence (BWKI) https://bw-ki.de/ motivates students to use AI tools to implement their ideas for a better world of tomorrow. The national competition was launched in 2018 at the AI research site in Tübingen by the Competence Center for Machine Learning and enables young people to actively demonstrate their skills in the AI research environment.

In 2021, Badisches Landesmuseum cooperated with BWKI as part of a hackathon under the motto “Write Code – Write History” and provided the challenge and the datasets.

Participants were asked to develop AI applications to be used in museums of the future, aiming at optimising knowledge transfer. The winning project by a 16-year-old student uses augmented reality to bring museum objects to life. The four 17- and 18-year-old students of the Hyperion team generated new artworks based on museum data. The winning team was supported by Badisches Landesmuseum in the continuation of its project idea. Book prizes and participation in various online courses were also awarded to other teams.

“Artificial intelligence is one of the most important and exciting topics of our time; it is a real game changer. In the national AI competition, teenagers and young adults can play an active role in shaping this important topic of the future,” explained Minister Theresia Bauer, chairperson of the Carl Zeiss Foundation Administration and patron of the national competition.

“Children have curiosity and fun. That makes them ideal researchers and they can live that out at BWKI,” said Professor Bernhard Schölkopf, director at the Max Planck Institute for Intelligent Systems and one of the initiators of the competition.

“It is just great and inspiring to see the creativity, skill and perseverance of the students in this competition. I dream of a society in which we encourage each other much more to develop and try out good ideas,” stated Professor Matthias Bethge, co-initiator of the competition and head of the Tübingen AI Center, BMBF Competence Center for Machine Learning.

Get to know more about the hackathon:

The livestream of the finale can be watched here. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fqbfwt1IxZo

The winning teams:

Channel Frege-2, Team LoremIpsum Boris Kantor: kARlsruhe augmented reality of museum content

Channel Turing-2, Team Hyperion: AI Art Generator

Channel Frege-1, Team Space Poster: Hieroglyphic Translator

Channel Lovelance-2, Team Cookiesablehnen

As part of the Creative User Empowerment project, it was a great pleasure to see what children and young people can do with museum data and how creatively and innovatively they use it. The hackathon was another step on the way to making museum data accessible to everyone and opening up creative spaces.

Resources

Federal Competition on Artificial Intelligence (BWKI): https://www.bw-ki.de/

Video of the winning projects (YouTube)

BWKI AI-Course (in German): https://ki-kurs.org/