AI hackathon yields tools to improve truth-seeking and collective intelligence

The recent AI for Epistemics Hackathon represents a focused effort to harness artificial intelligence for improved truthseeking across individual, societal, and systemic levels. Organized by Manifund and Elicit, the event brought together approximately 40 participants who developed nine projects aimed at enhancing how we discover, evaluate, and share reliable information. The hackathon’s outcomes demonstrate the growing potential for AI systems to strengthen human epistemics—from detecting fraudulent research to automating comment synthesis on discussion platforms—highlighting a promising intersection between advanced AI capabilities and enhanced collective intelligence.

The big picture: The hackathon showcased AI-powered tools designed to improve how humans and machines discover truth and make better decisions.

• About 40 participants developed nine projects that were formally judged, with three winners sharing a $10,000 prize pool.
• The event demonstrated the practical applications of AI for enhancing epistemics at individual, societal, and systemic levels.

Key innovations: Two projects emerged as winners, focusing on automating content analysis and detecting problematic research.

• Symphronesis, created by Campbell Hutcheson, automatically merges and color-codes comments on LessWrong to highlight disputes and contradictions.
• The Fraudulent Research Detection tool by Panda Smith and Charlie George uses language models to identify potential retractions or errors in published academic papers.

Notable projects: The hackathon produced several promising tools beyond the winning entries.

• Gustavo Lacerda’s Question Generator creates forecasting questions related to news articles being viewed.
• Ben Rachbach and William Saunders developed Manifund Eval to screen potential funding opportunities on the Manifund platform.
• Other projects included work on collective intelligence, thought logging, double-crux analysis, non-sycophantic AI prompting, and collaborative decision-making.

Why this matters: The hackathon represents a growing movement to apply AI capabilities toward improving how humans reason, share information, and make collective decisions.

• These tools could help address misinformation and cognitive biases that undermine effective decision-making in complex domains.
• The collaboration between AI researchers and epistemics-focused organizations demonstrates the potential for cross-disciplinary approaches to truth-seeking.

Resources available: The hackathon organizers have made project materials publicly accessible.

• Complete project demonstrations are available in video format on YouTube (https://youtu.be/xGAfG0L_82g).
• Project source code and descriptions can be accessed through the showcase website at https://moxsf.com/ai4e-hacks.