In a major global push for responsible artificial intelligence, HackTheFest launched the 2025 AI Bounty Hackathon, a first-of-its-kind and groundbreaking virtual competition. This team of experts in AI and algorithms has launched HackTheFest 2025, a global hackathon mobilizing hundreds of elite teams across North America, Africa, Asia, and Europe to tackle bias in artificial intelligence. This event started on July 1st and is set to end on July 3rd, 2025 and winners to be announced July 17, 2025.
The hackathon is co-led by a distinguished group of top professionals across the fields of AI risk modeling, fairness engineering, and ethical systems design: The hackathon is led by the organizer Rianat Abbas, a product risk expert and recognized leader in AI ethics. She is joined by Ifeoma Eleweke, co-organizer and community lead; each contributing important oversight to ensure participant submissions meet technical and social impact benchmarks. This 48-hour virtual inaugural event challenges participants to identify, document, and mitigate algorithmic bias in complex datasets and AI systems.”This event was designed to challenge how we think about fairness, security, and accountability in AI development” said Rianat Using advanced machine learning, fairness frameworks, interpretability tools, and fairness auditing techniques, teams will build models and generate technical reports that contribute to a growing public knowledge base around AI risk.
HackTheFest 2025 welcomed over 30 global judges and mentors, with keynotes and mentoring sessions led by top experts in the field. Judges include professionals from leading organizations such as OpenAI, Google, MetaAI, Workday, Visa, Microsoft, Amazon, and others, all bringing strong expertise in AI safety, bias mitigation, cybersecurity, product management, and large-scale model evaluation.
The hackathon is designed to equip emerging AI professionals with the tools and mindset needed to build responsibly. Judges and mentors include experienced voices from data science, cybersecurity, human rights, and tech policy, offering diverse perspectives on how to develop systems that benefit society. In addition to the challenge itself, select submissions will be added to an open AI Risk Repository to support developers, educators, and institutions advancing algorithmic accountability. With participants spanning over 20 countries, the event reflects a growing global push for more ethical and transparent approaches to AI development.
The initiative has begun drawing interest from universities, advocacy groups, and tech leaders who see it as an important move toward aligning AI with the public good. Beyond sparking dialogue, the event is helping to build practical tools and talent pathways that advance responsible AI at scale.
