HALIFAX, N.S. — In what has been described as “the Olympics of computer science,” Dalhousie University hosted a hackathon for students from Feb. 20 to 22.
Thousands of students came together for the three-day event, which featured 72 hours of uninterrupted computer programming. The end goal? The perfectly coded AI girlfriend.
Given Howe Hall’s emptiness during reading week, it was used to accommodate the visiting students. In an attempt to support safe sex, the university purchased 10,000 condoms to give away for free to the event’s participants.
The move proved sex-optimistic, rather than sex-positive, as by the end of the competition, not a single condom had been used. There was, however, a campus-wide tissue shortage.
By the end of the event, the students successfully programmed an AI girlfriend chatbot, but there was a catch. The first: a campus-wide stench that caused a two-day campus closure and a biohazard team to be called in after the convention’s conclusion. The second: many students weren’t OK with sharing the program.
“I just can’t believe she would use the same code to talk to another guy,” said Marcel LeStinque, a computer science student from the University of Waterloo. “It just makes me sick. It just goes to show that even if you program a girl yourself, she will only crush your heart and cheat.”
Other students had issues with the enhanced appearances of the customized avatars.
“It’s just like, I don’t want to see you in 8K if it’s a visual enhancement program helping you look that way,” said Saif Rokh. “You’re only 480p when you take that airbrush off. That’s chopped.”
The last of the many issues was that the computer science students programmed the chatbot with enough intelligence and self-respect to realize that many of the boys were scrubs, and she dumped over 90 per cent of them.
By Sam Creighton