Google has launched a US$100,000 artificial intelligence (AI) hackathon to unlock the power of data.
The hackathon tasks participants to build a working prototype that uses BigQuery’s AI capabilities to process unstructured or mixed-format data. That can include pulling up documents from a giant text archive, creating summaries on the fly or stitching together insights from messy, mixed data.
The aim is to address real data management challenges using tools that feel like an extension of SQL, not a separate system.
Addressing key data management challenges with AI hackathon
“Companies are sitting on piles of data, including chat logs, PDFs, screenshots and recordings, but they can’t do much with it,” Google stated. Existing tools are typically built for just one data format or they require too much manual work. This makes it hard to find patterns, generate content or even answer basic questions.
The challenge offers three approaches. Participants must use at least one approach, but may also use two or all three.
For each track (generative AI, vector search and multimodal) Google is awarding:
- 1st place: $15,000.
- 2nd place: $9,000.
- 3rd place: $6,000.
- Honorable mentions (two awards): $5,000 each.
“Beyond the cash prizes, this is an opportunity to build a public portfolio, create high-quality code samples and collaborate with the community, and gain experience with the latest Google Cloud technologies.”
Bringing AI to data
Valid submissions will first be evaluated for completeness and then evaluated based on the following criteria:
- Technical Implementation (35 percent).
- Innovation and creativity (25 percent).
- Demo and presentation (20 percent).
- Assets (20 percent).
- Bonus (10 percent)
Participants will get hands-on experience with BigQuery’s newest features that bring AI directly to data. SQL users will find these capabilities feel like a natural extension of their existing workflow, while Python practitioners can use BigQuery DataFrames to work using a familiar, pandas-like API, Google said. The goal is simple: build powerful, scalable AI solutions right where data lives.
“Whether you submit a demo, a notebook or a walkthrough, we want to see how you utilize these tools to make sense of data that is often overlooked,” Google stated.
Neil Hoyne, chief strategist at Google, added: “Businesses are capturing far too much data, but all of the hopes of insights (and value) are stuck in raw data. This is a contest to see who can do the best things with this technology to unlock the real value of that data that has been stuck for far too long.”