AI Security Hackathon - BlueDot x EF feat. Workshop Labs & Geodesic Research
What is this?
A 12-hour hackathon for only 30 (!) highly technical people interested in building something that:
Contributes to AI security/safety
Is venture scalable
Co-hosted by BlueDot Impact and Entrepreneurs First, and sponsored by Workshop Labs and Geodesic Research - with £2000+ in prize money!
Many people in the AI security/safety space have not considered founding a startup before. We believe:
Startups can be a powerful vehicle for positive change, including reducing AI risk
Technical AI security people have unfair advantages in building successful, impactful startups (thanks to personality traits & technical skills)
We need more AI security orgs. Existing orgs don’t scale fast enough to absorb the large amount of talent wanting to work in the space.
We believe startups can form a central part of this ecosystem.
Why?
Impact = magnitude * direction. Most AI safety people optimise for direction, and fear that increasing magnitude trades off with direction (e.g. profit motive might be misaligned with AI safety).
But you can’t neglect magnitude! And startups are an incredibly powerful, if not the most powerful, vector for magnitude – they attract a lot of talent and capital.
How do you ensure direction stays positive? That’s what this hackathon is for.
Examples
Detecting AI-generated voice fraud
Security infrastructure for deploying frontier models
Red-teaming toolkits
Eval-as-a-service platform
OS-level sandboxing tools for LLM plugins or agents
Agenda
0900-0925 - arrive + breakfast
EVENT BEGINS AT 0930 SHARP!!!
0930-1015 - Talk from Matt Clifford - CEO of EF, Chair of ARIA, ran def/acc, former Prime Minister's advisor for AI
1015-1300 - Team formation, hacking & lunch
1300-1400 - "office hours" with advisors & talks from Workshop & Geodesic
1400-1900 - Hacking & dinner
1900-2200 - Hacking, judging & final presentations!