© Goethe-Institut. Illustration: EL BOUM
Congratulations to the winning teams: Team 4c (A Word2Vec solution) and 3a (BiasByUs)!
Team 4c (A Word2Vec solution) looked at the fact that tools like Google Translate, DeepL etc. have difficulties with more complex content. The solution is a web platform that uses Word2Vec architecture which works by comparing words and identifying how "closely" they correspond to the context. The idea was praised for creating a very complete solution, which can be expanded for further languages and bias; the jury also liked the idea of making bias measurable.
Team 3a (BiasByUs) created a website: a crowdsourced database of bias examples and a source of information on the impact of bias. In future the database could be implemented as a browser plug-in. It's also about creating community around the subject and unbiasing the world collectively! BiasByUs was chosen because of its collaborative character and potential for further research. Users can educate themselves and find better alternatives. The jury encourages the team to work further on the browser plug-in idea.
An honourable mention goes to
team 2b and the idea of a "gender neutral" toggle. With a "gender neutral" toggle - all German pronouns (sie/er/neo) would be changed into they/them pronouns in English. The jury stressed the relevance of the proposed solution for the non-binary community. The idea also pointed to the important fact that pronouns and grammar are always evolving.
Read more about the hackathon and the winning solutions
here.
A short summary of all Top 5-Teams who have pitched their ideas can be found on
Goethe-Institut London’s twitter account.
Congratulations to all ten teams who made it through the hackathon! We loved the open-minded spirit of all participants and hope to see the ideas merging and evolving towards a better, less biased landscape of AI-based translation tools!
Huge thanks to all our partners, experts and jury members and all the participants who have shared their ideas with us! A special thanks to our Partner Impact Hub who have planned the Hackathon with us and have technically conducted it for us!
What was the Hackathon about?
The aim of The Artificially Correct Hackathon 2021 was to develop innovative, forwardlooking ideas and projects with regards to tackling bias in language and machine translation. The participants worked on one of the proposed challenges or their own projects, with the aim of coming up with innovative solutions, e.g. concepts, games, apps etc. The best projects developed during the event were awarded by the Goethe-Institut.