KUALA LUMPUR: IQI Global recently organised an AI Hackathon involving 30 teams of real estate agents and in-house staff. Participants were challenged to develop AI applications that could improve company operations while building skills for a working world where artificial intelligence is rapidly reshaping jobs and career opportunities.

IQI is supported by an in-house AI Task Force, AI-powered proprietary apps and portals, as well as a hybrid large language model approach combining frontier AI providers with locally hosted open-source models.

“The problem is not that our young people lack ability. It is that too few of them get the chance to work with the technology that will help determine who succeeds in the next decade,” said Juwai IQI co-founder and group managing director Daniel Ho.

“As employers, IQI takes the responsibility of training our team members in the latest technology seriously. The young people who learn on the job at IQI today will be better prepared to help Malaysia move forward as artificial intelligence becomes increasingly integrated into the way we work,” added Ho.

“This hackathon, in my opinion, is actually very good. It really opens up a lot of potential AI creators and content creators and you are not just limiting them to selling but they are now thinking about the whole process, the whole ecosystem. So this is really a good initiative,” shared StarProperty general manager Mindy Chia afterwards.

The Hackathon is part of IQI’s wider effort to become an AI-native organisation, embedding AI across its operations, systems and workflows. The company will evaluate promising employee-created solutions for implementation.

“Another lesson from the Hackathon is that becoming an AI-native organisation requires more than simply introducing AI tools. This is about giving our people the opportunity to think differently, solve real business challenges and actively contribute to how IQI evolves with AI,” Ho concluded.

Key attendees included Juwai IQI co-founder and group executive director Sheila Tan, IQI Team Elite group vice-president Dave Chong, Team IQI AG founder Kamal AG and principal Datin Siti.