The Jugend hackt “KI Labs” came in 2nd place in the Society category of the Saxon Digital Award 2022. The prize was awarded on December 14, 2022 by the Saxon Minister of State for Economy, Labor and Transport (SMWA), Martin Dulig. Pia Hanfeld and Lenz Fiedler from CASUS are part of the project team. Together with Nico Hoffmann and Patrick Stiller from the Institute of Radiation Physics at the Helmholtz-Zentrum Dresden-Rossendorf (HZDR) they played a key role in driving the KI Lab forward and supervise the students at the Görlitz site.
Since mid-2021, young people in the Saxon cities of Freiberg, Görlitz and Dresden have been given the opportunity to approach the topics of programming and artificial intelligence (AI, in German: Künstliche Intelligenz, KI) in a playful way. The Jugend hackt KI Labs have been very well accepted in the three cities. In spring 2022, the initiators already received the Recognition Award for Science Communication 2021 from the HZDR for their idea and the implementation of this idea.
With the prize money of 15,000 euros for 2nd place in the digital competition, the teams now want to improve the technical equipment of the AI labs in the three cities and, for example, purchase AI developer kits, laptops and drones. The exchange and mobility of young people from all three hackerspaces among each other will also be promoted by funding joint excursions and events such as hackathons.
With the Saxon Digital Award, the SMWA wants to draw attention to the many local actors with their innovations and approaches to solutions in the course of digitization. With the award, the SMWA honors outstanding contributions. For the debut this year, around 100 applications were received across the three award categories of society, business and open source.