Over 400 compete in 24-hour hackathon backed by AI giants

Pick any topic. Artificial intelligence generates a trivia question, then participants race to answer in one word faster than the Al models - that was one of the challenges of an online game that tests how humans fare against Al models.

- Zhaki Abdullah and Shermaine Ang

The game, along with a video generator that makes corporate training feel like a Netflix show and an art generator that turns random scribbles into brushstrokes, was a winning project in a 24-hour Cursor Hackathon.

The competition, which started at 9am on Oct 18 at the Singapore University of Technology and Design campus, challenged more than 400 participants to come up with anything they wanted using AI.

The event was also the first time that big Al firms such as Cursor, OpenAI, DeepMind, Anthropic and Supabase came together in one place.

Participants were aged between 13 and 62, and they ranged from teenagers to engineers and startup founders.

The top prize went to principal product manager Sritam Patnaik, who built an Al art generator that turns scribbles into digital art.

He received over US$43,000 (S$55,700) in credits with AI firms, as well as three months’ use of AI tools Manus Pro and ElevenLabs Pro.