def/acc hackathon - london
def/acc hackathon - london
build societal defenses against ai threats alongside 70+ builders.
📅 nov 21-23, 2025
📍 LISA co-working space in london
🌍 part of 1000+ builders worldwide (online version)
Sponsored by Halcyon Futures.
Halcyon identifies leaders from business, policy, and academia, and helps them build a secure and resilient world for the era of transformative artificial intelligence.
the problem
offensive ai capabilities spread in seconds. our defenses take years.
a bio student, some compute + kimi can now explore dangerous pathogen designs. automated tools find vulnerabilities faster than we can patch them. this asymmetry is accelerating.
but it's not too late to flip the script.
enter def/acc - accelerate defensive technologies to make sure humanity reaches a glorious future.
What we're building:
Prototypes of defenses for advanced threats. Some ideas include
⚙️ AI:
Trusted models monitoring untrusted ones
Scalable oversight - techniques for supervising AI systems that are more capable than their human overseers
Alignment evaluation and intervention - measuring which values AI systems pursue and methods to improve alignment
🦠 Biosecurity
Environmental pathogen surveillance
Dna synthesis screening
Early warning systems that could prevent the next pandemic
🛡️ Cybersecurity
AI red-teaming for critical infrastructure
Formal verification of critical code
Memory-safe refactoring (c++ → rust)
🤖 Privacy, Trust, and Coordination:
Privacy-preserving verification, audit, and threat intelligence tools
Defenses against privacy-violating intrusive AI
Confidential computing for ML workloads
🏆 prizes & opportunities
$10,000 prize pool
fully-funded spot in bluedot's december incubator week (dec 1-5) for the winning team
schedule
friday nov 21
6:00 pm - doors open, team formation
6:30 pm - opening keynotes
saturday nov 22
9:00 am - breakfast & hacking
2:00 pm - office hours + lunch
6/7:00 pm - dinner & progress check-ins
late - optional overnight hacking
sunday nov 23
10:00 am - breakfast + final sprint
5:00 pm - submission deadline
6:00 pm - fireside chat with geoff ralston
7:00 pm - winners announced + celebration
who should come?
engineers ready to build. researchers ready to implement. anyone who believes defensive technology is under-invested relative to its importance. we'll keep a high talent bar.
we provide
space + all meals & endless caffeine 🚀
mentorship & domain expertise
if you're good a direct path to scale your solution into an org
$400 in API credits to build! (sign up here for API credits)
hosted by bluedot impact - the leading talent accelerator for beneficial ai and societal defenses - and apart research.