The heat beams down on me. It’s another blistering hot day in Las Vegas, the last place you would expect SpaceXAI to host a hackathon, an event where programmers see what they can build in a few hours. I lift large packs of soda up the stairs — SpaceXAI hasn’t provided volunteer organizers with a humanoid robot (yet) to help with the manual labor of a hackathon.

Years ago, these hackathons would be held over a Saturday and Sunday, fueled by energy drinks and pizza. Now, with artificial intelligence, they last just two hours. Two hours to build a fully functioning game hosted on a website. The winner built an augmented reality boxing game, something that would have taken a few days just a few years ago. Another built a wizard game with stunning graphics, something that could have been a console game in the 2000s.