On March 7 and 8, 2024, Alibaba Cloud organized an artificial intelligence hackathon in Singapore, hosted at its office in Lazada One. The event attracted 117 developers from diverse backgrounds, forming a total of 21 competing teams, including representatives from enterprises, university students, and independent developers.
The participants collectively delivered 17 AI applications leveraging various solutions offered by Alibaba Cloud, such as Platform for AI, AnalyticDB for PostgreSQL, ECS, and notably, the company’s natural language processing (NLP) application, Tongyi Qianwen. These tools, designed to tackle real-world challenges, provided participants with an avenue to showcase their creativity and technical capabilities.
The hackathon offered a total prize pool exceeding SGD 50,000 in value, comprising both cash rewards and cloud computing resources. The awardees were selected by a judging panel comprising subject experts based in Singapore. They include:
- Neil Han, president of TGO Singapore, and founder and CEO of Reddio.
- Zhang Bingxue, visiting associate professor at the National University of Singapore.
- Jayden Wei, founding partner and chairman of OGBC Innovation Hub.
- Wang Yong, assistant professor at the Singapore Management University.
- Yang Kan, head of solutions at Alibaba Cloud (South APAC).
Based on the panel’s evaluation, several teams were chosen to receive various awards. The top spot was secured by a team that developed an iOS application capable of detecting and analyzing baby crying sounds in real-time, aiding parents in timely responses. This application utilized various services offered by Alibaba Cloud, including its Relational Database Service (RDS), Function Compute, and OSS, among others.
Two teams ranked second during the evaluation, with one presenting a novel method to enhance the monitoring capabilities of real-time security systems, and the other demonstrating how AI can provide in-depth insights into product reviews.
Another two teams jointly secured third place. One developed a solution to assist teachers in grading assignments and offering error feedback by leveraging Alibaba Cloud’s ECS and Tongyi Qianwen services, while the other utilized a similar set of tools to create DormChecker, an application facilitating analytics of hygiene conditions in dormitories of Singapore-based migrant workers.
In a post-event statement, Alibaba Cloud said that the hackathon aimed not only to enhance its branding as a competitive platform but also to support developer innovation and problem-solving capabilities within Singapore’s tech ecosystem and the wider global community.
Notably, the timing of this event coincides with the 2023 launch of the Singapore National AI Strategy 2.0 (NAIS 2.0), underscoring Alibaba Cloud’s proactive role in facilitating AI-related developments as Singapore continues its efforts to transform its economy through deeper integration of AI.
Alibaba Cloud also said it intends to continue contributing to tech innovation progress and anticipates that such events will facilitate more exciting breakthroughs in the near future.
This article was published in partnership with Alibaba Cloud.