First-year students in MIT’s Social and Engineering Systems (SES) doctoral program, Eric Liu and Ashley Peake, have a unique interest in investigating housing inequality issues. At the MIT Policy Hackathon, they had an opportunity to apply their knowledge and conduct research on these real-world issues. The hackathon, organized by students in the IDSS and TPP, is in its sixth year and gathers hundreds of participants from around the world to explore solutions to societal challenges.
In the occasion, the theme was “Hack-GPT: Generating the Policy of Tomorrow,” which emphasized the role of generative AI in addressing technical and policy-based challenges. The event saw a shift back to a virtual-only format this year, increasing the overall number of participants.
Liu and Peake, along with Adrian Butterton, Hudson Yuen, and Ian Chan, formed the winning team “Team Ctrl+Alt+Defeat” in the housing challenge category. They proposed a solution to the eviction crisis in the US, capitalizing on the wide scope of the problem. Liu and Peake appreciated the speed and collaboration through the hackathon, which they found rewarding.
A company called Veridos, which provided a challenge in data systems for human rights, benefitted immensely from the event. Letizia Bordoli, senior AI product manager at Veridos, appreciated the innovative solutions and fresh perspectives provided by the participants, especially regarding universal birth registration.
In addition to the housing and human rights challenges, there was also a health challenge and an environmental challenge about space for environmental justice. The latter drew attention to open-source data in a field often dominated by proprietary data.
Yassine Elhallaoui, part of Team EcoEquity, worked on the aerospace challenge. The team’s policy proposal promoted the use of satellite data to increase water resilience for vulnerable communities. Elhallaoui noted that the hackathon’s focus on policy made it possible to create solutions that can effect real world change.
