Am; Lek: You should read this record. It may win you a lot of money (up to 30,000 dollars), and along the way also help humanity in general, and Israel and the Jews in particular.
The year is 2024. In the most advanced cities of the world, you can find autonomous cars on the roads, virtual reality glasses that enable adventures in distant stars, and digital assistants smarter than any human. And alongside all this technological wealth and progress, hatred also thrives: xenophobia in general, and anti-Semitism specifically. And these are also flourishing under the auspices of technology.
Today's social networks have become a fertile ground for conspiracy theories and spreading and echoing hatred against the Jews in general. Every year they publish on Twitter More than four million antisemitic tweets[1], and the pace only increased. Between 2020 and 2021 Signed up on TikTok A 912 percent increase - almost tenfold - in the number of anti-Semitic comments[2].
There is an overwhelming consensus that today's technology increases the spread of anti-Semitism. Social networks create echo chambers where users encourage each other to express the most extreme views. Algorithms designed to help us get to know each other better, actually distribute the most shocking and inciting content. It doesn't have to be this way - but that is the situation today.
But he can change.
Innovation competitions
When the Google Lunar XPRIZE competition to reach the moon was launched, few believed that the competition's goals were achievable. Yes, the largest governments in the world managed to reach the moon at a cost of billions of dollars, but the thought that a private body - a company, or even a non-profit association - would succeed in landing a spacecraft on the moon, seemed delusional.
Despite the skepticism, it happened. More than twenty companies were formed to try to win the competition, and one more association named SpaceIL. The companies raised hundreds of millions of dollars and thousands of aeronautics and space engineers to accomplish the goal. And what is just as important, they spread the word about the competition and the great goal at the end of it: to restart the conquest of space, several decades after the United States and the Soviet Union jointly decided to withdraw from the race. This message reached millions of children and youth all over the world, and certainly motivated many to the decision to enter the field of space and study and research the subject at university.
In the end, no company managed to land a spacecraft on the moon. Only the Israeli association - SpaceIL - was up to the task, and even then the spacecraft did not survive the landing on the lunar surface. but it does not matter. Some of humanity's greatest minds were recruited for the cause and harnessed to an inspiring vision. The younger generation was called to the flag, and showed up en masse in the movement that we still see the results of today. This is what success looks like in competitions designed to harness the wisdom of the masses to promote innovation and entrepreneurship.
Nowadays, you can find innovation competitions in almost every field. The XPRIZE organization (full disclosure: the author also worked for several years at XPRIZE) has in recent years opened competitions with prizes of one hundred million dollars each to deal with the climate crisis and stop aging. Other organizations, such as HeroX, NASA and DARPA, are launching smaller competitions with prizes in the tens of thousands and hundreds of thousands of dollars, but which still attract the brightest and most creative students and engineers.
Why don't we harness such competitions to also face the challenge of anti-Semitism?
This is the approach that underpinned the thinking of the founders of the ADIR competition. (Disclosure: the writer serves on the advisory board of the competition)
ADIR competition
On the morning of October 7, Muriel Lotan was focused on strategy research and accompanying investors and start-up companies in New York. On the morning of October 8, Lotan's world was already very different. Her nephew, Adir Masika, was brutally murdered at the Nova Festival. In the weeks after the massacre, Lotan witnessed first-hand the anti-Semitism and hatred of Israelis and Jews on some of the most prestigious campuses in the United States and on social media around it.
At this point she decided to take action.
Lotan collaborated with Dr. Shai Hershkowitz - who served in a senior role at XPRIZE himself - to open the ADIR competition for innovation to the masses to deal with hate and anti-Semitism, online and offline. The final competition, which is still being planned, will offer a prize of one million dollars to team members who will develop and demonstrate a practical solution to reduce anti-Semitism and integrate it into society. What exactly would such a solution look like? That's the point: nobody knows. That's why competition is needed to encourage inventors to get out of their comfort zone and try creative and innovative solutions to achieve the goal.
This, as mentioned, will be the full competition. But in the meantime Lotan and Hershkowitz are starting more modestly: they recently opened a smaller competition, with prizes of only thirty-thousand dollars. This is still a respectable amount by all accounts, and to win it you need to... come up with an idea.
Yes, that's all. almost.
The big innovation competitions - those with prizes of hundreds of thousands of dollars - almost always require proof of feasibility from the competitors. That is, it is not enough to bring an idea. Ideas are like politicians: we all support at least one, and are sure that all the others are bad. The idea is only the first step, and it must be accompanied by practical action to prove that it really exists. Even within the larger ADIR competition, the competitors will have to show that their ideas have value. But at least for now, in the little competition that is the opening shot, you only need to come up with the idea.
But he should be really good.
How to win a lot of money
In the first stage of the ADIR competition which is open to the whole world, Lotan and Reshkowitz are asking for ideas about the ways in which technological and scientific innovation can be stimulated and rewarded in order to deal with anti-Semitism. They want to understand what the most difficult problems to solve in the field of anti-Semitism are, how it would be possible to solve them anyway with the help of science and technology, and how you would design a competition yourself that unites these questions[3].
Let's face it: eradicating anti-Semitism is not an easy challenge, to say the least. That's why the founders of the competition decided to open it up to innovation at the highest level: one that would come from all corners of society. In the first ADIR competition there is a track for school students, from elementary to high school age. There is a track for students, and there is a third track for everyone else. Do they really expect a 3rd grade student to find the solution to dealing with anti-Semitism? I'm pretty sure that's not what will happen - but that's the beauty of innovation competitions: they're open to everyone because the most innovative ideas often come from unexpected places. This is also a good way to spread the information: maybe that 3rd grade student will only hear about the competition from his teacher, get excited and share it with his parents who would not normally be exposed to the information - and they will be the ones to participate in the competition.
And who knows? Maybe there will be the brilliant third grade student who will crack the problem. And along the way he will win a lot of money. He won't even have to recruit his own team, as the competition is also open to individuals. He will only have to register and submit the idea.
You are also invited
Surely you have already understood the purpose of this entry: to encourage you to win a lot of money. And perhaps, along the way, also help humanity as a whole, and the Jews and Israel in particular. Take a few minutes - maybe even a few hours - and think: what could winning ideas look like for using technology and science to deal with anti-Semitism in the world? How can you build a competition that will encourage people to develop such ideas? Who can I share with to promote the issue?
Do you have an idea? Want to win a lot of money? Register for the ADIR competition and submit your idea (the exact details, with not many small letters, on the website).
Don't have your own idea? share Share anywhere. Share the word of the contest with your friends, colleagues, children and your children's teachers. Share it with the geeky nephew you never understood how he thinks. Share it with the elderly uncle with the weird opinions no one wants to hear. The solution can come from each of you and each of them. This is, after all, the principle of innovation competitions.
In the last two decades, humanity has built digital platforms that connect the world, and at the same time incite the inhabitants of that world and are used to spread conspiracies and hatred. We can do better. The technologies can be used by us to bring people together, instead of separating them. To reveal the truth where it has been hidden and tarnished until now. We have the technologies that can do this, and if not - we certainly have the people who can develop, perfect and adapt them for this purpose.
Together, we can use our collective wisdom to make the world a better and safer place, for Jews and in general.
Are you convinced? Go to the HeroX website, Sign up for the contest, and started thinking about how to change the world for the better[4].
Successfully!
[1] https://www.adl.org/resources/report/quantifying-hate-year-anti-semitism-twitter
[2] https://www.brandeis.edu/jewish-experience/social-justice/2022/may/antisemitism-social-media.html
