Minus Zero hosted Bengaluru’s largest live AI challenge dubbed “-1” across two days which saw participation of over 100 AI practitioners from across India gathered to solve two core research problem statements from Minus Zero around synthetic data generation for training next-gen AI models.
A lot of unique solutions were proposed around using state-of-the-art AI breakthroughs like generative networks, diffusion models, etc and also new proposed novel means to make data more photorealistic and also controllable by promoting techniques and LLMs.
The event that was organised in collaboration with Google Cloud & Chiratae Ventures also featured a unique speaker lineup including Gagandeep Reehal (CEO, Minus Zero), Gursimran Kalra (COO, Minus Zero), Vijay Patel (CTO of Chiratae Ventures), and speakers from Google and Devfolio. These visionaries shared their insights and experiences, inspiring the participants and shedding light on the evolving landscape of AI.
The event fostered community-driven innovation and collaboration for the ever-evolving domain of AI where good quality data is very crucial. Participants in this event were tasked with solving two challenging problem statements. The first challenge involved developing a generative AI model that could create realistic and novel art, while the second challenge focused on creating a generative AI system capable of generating human-like text content. In India, research-based or innovation-led AI challenges are relatively scarce compared to USA , making Minus Zero's pioneering role in AI research even more significant to foster this.
Minus Zero's co-founder, CEO, and CTO, Gagandeep Reehal, expressed "With data becoming the new oil, we believe access to data will be democratised when realistic data can be generated synthetically as per specific needs to train the next generation AI models. This will give the power back to the open source community, engineers and the new entrepreneurs to do foundational research in AI, which is currently getting concentrated to large organisations due to the costly barrier in access to data. This is our way of giving back to the community.”
This exceptional event not only celebrated innovation but also witnessed remarkable success, where finally 7 teams were selected for pitching their solution in front of a diverse group of SMEs in AI with awards of 4 lacs up for grabs. The team composed of Shaurya, Shaunak, and Siddharth won the Grand prize, while teams comprising Diksha, Ananya, Nishtha, and Aakash, and Ankur, Chetan Gokul, and Kishore won Most Promising Idea Award for each of two challenges respectively.