Ansible triumphs at A.I. For Good Hackathon

IPG Mediabrands Malaysia’s mobile and technology agency Ansible was named champion at the recent A.I. For Good Hackathon organised by BFM-Edge.
It is amongst the first hackathons in the world to bring together the best minds in business to develop solutions enabled by AI (artificial intelligence) for the benefit of everyone, especially the urban poor, disabled and homeless and/or organisations that serve them.
Spanning a period of 6 weeks, the hackathon comprised workshops on AI for developers conducted by IBM, a Design Thinking workshop and fieldwork, and concluded in a 36-hour hackathon over the 10th and 11th of November.
The hackathon was open to non-tech talents, and companies could send teams of up to four, with at least one IT developer included.
All teams developed and built applications powered by IBM’s Bluemix Cloud and used IBM’s  Watson API service.
The young team from Ansible comprised Izyan Suhaila, Melcolm Chiong, Alvin Ng, ChNg Shi Yi and Hee Poh Yee (team picture), and their hybrid capabilities beat over a dozen other teams for the grand prize of RM 6,000.
The team set out to help the homeless secure jobs which met the agenda of the hackathon, to find solutions that solve social issues and to benefit the underprivileged.
With this in mind, the Ansible team developed a simple solution of a job portal that lists both temporary and short-term jobs for those with minimal or no skills which could be deployed in two parts – online with a chatbot, and on-ground.
Managing Director of Ansible, Manu Menon (picture) commented, “The team worked tirelessly over the span of a month to craft out their ideas and meet the brief. They combined their love for technology and their understanding of the problems plaguing the homeless, to come up with an executable solution powered by AI.”
The Ansible team now qualifies to join MDEC’s Big App Challenge which takes place on the 17th of December.