Meta’s Llama Impact Hackathon: Pioneering AI Solutions for Public Good

Meta yesterday concluded its groundbreaking Llama Impact Hackathon in London, marking a significant milestone in AI innovation aimed at transforming public services. The event, held in collaboration with Cerebral Valley brought together over 200 developers across 56 teams, all leveraging Meta’s open source Llama 3.2 model to address critical challenges in healthcare, clean energy, and social mobility.

Revolutionising NHS Frontline Services

The winning team, Guardian, developed a concept of an AI-powered triage assistant which could reduce waiting times and better allocate resources in A&E departments. This innovative solution, built on Llama 3.2, enhances patient care through intelligent patient intake and real-time risk assessments. Guardian’s tool, Atlas, acts as a clinical AI agent, providing crucial support to frontline medical staff and facilitating communication in multiple languages to improve patient evaluations.

Celebrating Innovation and Collaboration

The hackathon showcased the potential of open source AI to drive positive social impact. The top three teams shared a prize fund of $50,000 and will receive six weeks of technical mentorship to further develop their projects. Participation in this hackathon also enables these teams to apply for both regional grants of up to $100K and global grants of up to $500K through the Llama 3.1 Impact Grants which close on 1st December 2024.

Empowering Developers and Researchers

“It was inspiring to be at Meta and discuss how open source AI can be harnessed for public benefit. Whether accelerating cancer diagnoses, boosting productivity, or developing new tools to combat climate change, this technology holds immense potential. That’s why we’re placing AI at the forefront to not only improve public services and stimulate economic growth but also deliver a brighter future for communities across the country,” – UK Minister for AI Feryal Clark.

“The UK has the developer talent, research base, and creativity to lead in deploying AI. With access to open source AI models like Llama, developers and researchers can craft tools and systems tailored to Britain’s challenges, from enhancing public service delivery to boosting workplace productivity and aiding scientific breakthroughs. We eagerly anticipate these projects coming to life and look forward to working with our winners as well as the UK Government to develop them further.” – Nick Clegg, President of Global Affairs at Meta.

“The talent at this London Llama Hackathon was some of the best we’ve ever seen. More than 200 developers come out to build projects for the public good and demonstrate how open source AI can create positive social impact.” – Ivan Porollo Founder, Cerebral Valley.

Meet the Finalists

We would like to extend our congratulations to all the finalists who participated in the UK Llama Impact Hackathon. Their innovative projects demonstrate the vast potential of AI to drive positive change in the UK’s public services. Here were the finalists:

• First place – Guardian: An AI-powered triage assistant to support frontline NHS staff. Built on Llama 3.2, Guardian transforms A&E departments through intelligent patient intake, real-time risk assessment, and Atlas – a breakthrough clinical AI agent which provides a second pair of eyes to doctors and nurses. It will also support patients across multiple languages helping them communicate their symptoms better. 
• Second Place – Gripmind: Is a solution which makes robotics in assisted living more useful, scalable and affordable. An open source project combining the Llama 3.2 Vision model, which processes signals from the brain, your voice or via images to control a robotic arm. It’s envisaged this solution could help support people with mobility issues.
• Third place – Pharmallama: An on-device app which allows patients to engage with their pharmacist to discuss potential side effects they may be experiencing; understand what medication they need to be on and centralises the patient records to spot potential conflicting medications. This will be particularly beneficial for those with mobility issues or who are unable to access a more local pharmacy.  
• ClimaticAI: Heat the person, not the home, and save up to a third on energy bills. Their AI-powered concept works with smart devices, infrared-controlled appliances, and IoT sensors to optimise energy use based on presence, cost, and savings goals. Affordable, open source, and easy to use—comfort and efficiency, simplified.
• Team WinAmp: An intelligent companion app for sustainable eating which makes the healthy choice the easy choice by comparing supermarket offers on healthy food. It uses Llama to create highly personalised meal plans and habit-forming coaching, which is accessible at scale.
• The GoodPath: A platform which creates a roadmap into a socially impactful career – including culturally-relevant explanations, visual diagrams and translations into underserved regional dialects. It has a tutor function which can guide you on everything from how to give strong interview answers to flash cards for exam preparation. 

A Commitment to Open Source

We believe an open approach best ensures AI delivers broad benefits to society. This is why we make Llama free and openly available for anyone to access and download. Since 2023, there have been more than 400 million downloads of all Llama versions, demonstrating how Llama has been a bedrock for AI innovation globally. Since the release of Llama 2 in July 2023, Meta has issued over $2 million in Llama Impact Grants and Awards, fostering innovation and collaboration across various sectors.

Our partners

Our partners for this event included Cerebral Valley, Groq, Nebius, and Neon, who provided inference, compute, and data retrieval support for the participants over the weekend. 

Cerebral Valley is the biggest AI community in the world with 40,000+ of the best developers in the industry.

Groq provided 1,000+ tok/s Llama model inference for hackers. Nebius provisioned each team an H100 VM for compute and model fine-tuning. Neon provided a simple serverless database environment. 

Looking Ahead

The Llama Impact Hackathon is just one of many initiatives under Meta’s Llama Impact program, which includes accelerator programs, training, and workshops. These efforts aim to harness the power of open source AI to solve important local and global challenges, ensuring a brighter future for communities worldwide.