Kaggle turns real-world problems into competitions with cash bounties, attracting 19 million engineers to solve them. Microsoft developed Kinect technology and researchers advanced HIV treatment through Kaggle challenges. The platform offers more motivation and reach than traditional grants.
There's this thing called Kaggle. Kaggle competition. It was a startup that raised $12 million. It was eventually bought by Google. According to their website, they've had 19 million engineers compete in their competitions. And if you're a company, you could put a bounty out there and people will compete to win it. So for example, you remember Microsoft Kinect, like the camera that you put on your Xbox so they could watch you play and somehow interact with that? I believe was heavily developed by one of these competitions. But then they do other things. For HIV research and things like that. This gamifying system has actually contributed to like big important problems. I'm incredibly fascinated and interested in these competitions, and they don't all need to be huge, but I think this is like so much more leverage and the publicity and the wanting to win. It seems so much more better for society to do a contest, and it's also more work than just giving.
