Typewriter hackathon idea bans AI, then lets AI read the paper

The proposal starts from a worry the author raises: as AI writes code as a matter of course, the old-style hackathon in which people compete on typing and design skill in a limited time may slowly stop working. Even someone typing furiously at the venue might have AI writing behind them. The author treats AI-assisted development as a legitimate skill, then asks the opposite question: what kind of venue and tools would preserve a hackathon where humans compete without AI.

From that question the rules fall out one by one. No internet, no smartphone, no AI, no outside references, and code typed onto paper. The typewriter was chosen over handwriting because messy handwriting is hard even for people to read, and asking an AI to read it later is harder still, while a contest of handwriting speed would miss the point of judging programming ability. During the day AI is not available; after submission it becomes the means of returning what humans made to a modern computer, so that misread symbols, line breaks, red-pen edits, and mixed-up versions all become part of the contest. Awards such as the code the AI read most accurately and the code that gave the AI the most trouble extend that collaboration to the end.

The author is candid that none of this needs to happen, and that the practical obstacle is procurement: typewriters cannot be found. The real question the piece wants to raise is not whether to ban AI, but how to redesign the competition environment itself when AI is taken for granted, since simply banning AI under the old rules is probably not enough. Whether such an event ever becomes feasible seems to hinge less on the rules than on whether the hardware can be sourced at all.