Hi!ckathon 3 – Look back to the third edition
After two successful editions, Hi! PARIS staged the third Hi!ckathon over the January 13-15, 2023 weekend.
The Hi! PARIS hackathon competition is supported by Hi! PARIS’ seven corporate donors (L’Oréal, Capgemini, TotalEnergies, KERING, Rexel, VINCI and Schneider Electric), which rewarded seven winning teams with thematic prizes.
An online 5 week prep and on-site final sprint
This year, 340 students from more than 10 universities joined the Hi!ckathon and its five-week preparation, thus underlining the popularity of the event. After two online editions of the data challenge, the 2023 version was exclusively on-site, at ENSTA Paris and brought together more than 130 students for an entire week-end devoted to the final sprint.
The chosen theme of this year’s hackathon was AI & Energy Sobriety. To better prepare the participants for the challenge, they were offered a five-week training program composed of courses, assignments and coaching on Data Science as well as weekly webinars held by experts from the corporate donors about their vision and the latest innovations in Artificial Intelligence (see our previous news on the “AI & Energy Sobriety talks”).
Round table with coporate donors
The opening ceremony, held on Friday January 13, brought together six of our seven Hi! PARIS corporate donors in an open discussion related to the chosen theme.
The panelists – Stéphane Lannuzel (L’Oréal), Etienne Piollet (Capgemini), Victor Martin (TotalEnergies), Géraldine Vallejo (KERING), François Lemaistre (VINCI), Philippe Rambach (Schneider Electric) – were interviewed by Louis Grenioux, PhD student in AI at École polytechnique – IP Paris and former participant in the first two Hi!ckathons.
For this panel discussion, the questions were proposed in advance by the participating students and were gathered around three main topics:
- How can AI & Data science be an accelerator of Energy Sobriety?
- What is the trade-off between higher carbon consumption from more complex AI algorithms & Energy Sobriety policies in companies? Shall we limit complexity to focus on simpler algorithms?
- How can we deal with ethics and privacy while working on AI project?
As the subject of Energy Sobriety is central to recent news, participants asked questions related to generational interrogations such as the apparent paradox between energy consuming AIs and energy sobriety policies, and the ethical issues related to artificial intelligence.
Interviewed by Louis Grenioux the corporate donors tackled those questions not only in the context of their own company but also through the perspective of society at large. Thanks to this roundtable, the participants were able to better understand how those companies were providing solutions to key questions preoccupying their generation.
We discussed important topics around energy sobriety using actual facts and figures. The roundtable provide a rare occasion to directly question actors from major companies about those issues.”
Support of the participants and coaching sessions
Throughout the Hi!ckathon final sprint weekend, the teams were coached by Data Scientists from the corporate donors’ teams. A wide range of activities (team building, sports, VR activities) were also organized to facilitate their experience and make the event a memorable moment shared by students from all horizons.
The Hi!ckathon is the perfect opportunity for students to sharpen their analytical skills as well as gain insights on the business opportunities of such technologies and their place in society. This multidisciplinary approach is Hi! PARIS’ DNA!
This work has benefited from a government grant managed by the ANR under France 2030 with the reference “ANR-22-CMAS-0002”.