Redhill School partnered with Teens in AI, a global initiative, to host the first ‘Girls in AI’ hackathon this past weekend. The hackathon was held to commemorate International Women’s Day on 8 March.
Groups of learners from Redhill School in Sandton and the Tomorrow Trust non-profit organisation were challenged to use artificial intelligence to come up with solutions to solve a UN sustainable development goal (UN SDG) such as access to quality education and reduced inequality. Previous coding skills were not needed to take part.
The hack was won by the String Sisters, a quartet who designed Skaibot. It’s a chatbot that uses artificial intelligence to address teenage pregnancy, thus reducing poverty, one of the UN SDGs.
“We want Skai to help with teen pregnancy before the problem escalates,” said group member Paballo Mokgethi. Girls can anonymously ask questions around sexual health and relationships and get FAQs answered by social workers and life orientation teachers, who will have special access to the questions and be able to create videos or class lessons to support young girls.
Speaking after they were announced as winners, the group said they were just grateful for the opportunity to experience something new and that they did not think they would actually win. Their prize is a three-day entrance to the Deep Learning IndabaX, an AI and machine learning conference to be held at the University of Pretoria later this month.
Experience is the best teacher
Other solutions from the day included a community safety app that will use AI to detect problem areas, alerting law enforcement and community members about criminal hot-spots.
A group of grade 12 learners developed an educational platform that will use artificial intelligence to identify learners’ interests and recommend career choices.
Redhill School’s head of educational tech and hackathon organiser, Lulu Burger, said an event such as this one is important in developing the country’s skills pipeline, especially for females.
“Not enough of our grade 10s are considering careers in tech and between our high unemployment and the skills shortage, we aren’t feeding the pipeline. Today, we’re challenging the girls to hack the UN SDGs and consider their role in the industry.”
“All our prizes are experience based so the winners will be exposed to industry specialists. We didn’t want to give away typical prizes like tablets; we wanted to inspire them by enabling them to see the opportunities out there for them.”
The day’s prizes and mentors were sponsored by Microsoft, EDRO, Impimpi Technologies, Iress, FinChatBot, the IITPSA, the Tiisa Group and IQbusiness. Each prize sponsor committed to giving the winners an experience at their company or a tech event.
Part of the challenge was to have the learners empathise with their target market by creating a persona, a fictional character who would use the application. Mentors in design thinking, tech, AI ethics and entrepreneurship were brought in to advise the teams.
Johan Steyn of IQbusiness regularly volunteers as a tech mentor and has worked previously with Teens in AI.
"These young girls challenged me. They were asking about things I hadn’t even considered! Now we have to ask ourselves what we should be doing to get these talented people into the industry, as early as possible. There’s a lack of coordination in the skills pipeline,” he said.
Bhavisha Patel from Iress, a software provider to the financial industry, said the organisation hosts its own internal hackathons and decided to get involved in the event to see how they can develop youth interest in coding. Iress sponsored the Grade 12 special prize – an invitation to an internal hackathon in May, which was won by the Megatron Maniacs team.
The Tomorrow Trust and Redhill work together to provide educational support to vulnerable children, improving their grade 12 results and their chances of accessing tertiary education. Mayibongwe Ndima of the Trust said, “These children have brilliant minds, being here shows them that technology is not something to be afraid of, it’s creating opportunities for us all.”
One of the students she works with through the trust is Delphina Maluleka. She said, “I’m following the CAT (Computer Applications Technology) stream at school. I’d like to use what I’m learning to help people with disabilities; they aren’t really accommodated in society so I’d like to design gadgets that will make their lives more comfortable. The solutions are already there, but not everyone can access them because they’re expensive."
Speaking via video-link, Teens in AI founder, Elena Sinel closed the event by telling the hackers: “This is only the beginning of your journey, you’re producing something that you and your communities can be proud of. Get your products out there and show the world that you can do it.”
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