logo
Brain over bots: "Humanity prevails" as human programmer defeats AI in 10-hour programming war

Brain over bots: "Humanity prevails" as human programmer defeats AI in 10-hour programming war

Time of India7 days ago
A Polish programmer has beaten an OpenAI model in a gruelling 10-hour coding competition, sparking fresh debate about where artificial intelligence fits in skilled work. Przemysaw Debiak, who goes by Psyho online pseudonym, came out on top against
OpenAI
's custom-built model during the AtCoder World Tour Finals 2025 in Tokyo.
The result has got people talking about what this means for programming's future.
AtCoder runs one of the world's most respected competitive programming platforms, attracting elite coders from across the globe. This year's competition had an unusual twist - for the first time, an AI model called "OpenAIAHC" went head-to-head with 12 of the world's best human programmers. Debiak, who used to work for OpenAI, ended up winning the whole thing.
A brutally intense competition format
The competition format was brutal. Everyone had to tackle one massive optimisation problem in the Heuristic Contest category; one of the hardest areas in competitive programming. The problem was classified as NP-hard, meaning contestants needed clever, sometimes imperfect approaches to find the best solution they could within 10 hours.
This wasn't just about coding ability. Competitors had to keep their concentration sharp and think strategically whilst battling exhaustion over the marathon session.
by Taboola
by Taboola
Sponsored Links
Sponsored Links
Promoted Links
Promoted Links
You May Like
Nvidia's AI Strategy Is Clear - But Is Wall Street Paying Attention?
Seeking Alpha
Read More
Undo
The organisers made sure it was fair by giving everyone identical hardware - no computational advantages for the AI. Contestants could use any programming language AtCoder supports, but there was a catch: five-minute cooldown periods between submissions.
This meant everyone had to think carefully before making their next move.
Despite OpenAI's model having incredible processing power, Debiak's determination and problem-solving skills won out.
His final score hit 1,812,272,558,909 points, beating the AI's 1,654,675,725,406 by a slim 9.5% margin. The AI still performed brilliantly though, outscoring the other 10 human competitors.
Ex-OpenAI employee's win was symbolic of something far more important
This wasn't really about points or algorithms, it was symbolic. Many people saw this competition as representing something much bigger: the ongoing struggle between human creativity and AI's growing capabilities. As artificial intelligence keeps advancing in medicine, engineering, and countless other fields, this contest became a pivotal moment in discussions about automation and whether humans still have a place in specialist work.
The win meant something special for Debiak. Having worked at OpenAI previously, he knew exactly how powerful AI could become in transforming entire industries. Yet his victory showed that human determination, creativity, and mental toughness still count for something, even against advanced AI systems.
Debiak posted on social media afterwards: "I'm completely exhausted. … I'm barely alive. Humanity has prevailed (for now!)."
The close result highlighted how AI can crunch through vast amounts of data quickly, but still can't quite match the subtle problem-solving abilities humans bring, especially under intense pressure.
Sam Altman's acknowledgement and what to expect next
OpenAI handled their narrow defeat well. They congratulated Debiak on social media, writing: "Congrats to the champion for holding us off this time." Sam Altman, OpenAI's CEO, also praised Debiak with a simple "Good job psyho" post.
Although AI came second, OpenAI saw this as progress in competitive programming AI. But it raises uncomfortable questions about future contests like AtCoder. If AI can already match some of the world's best human programmers, how long before machines completely take over these events? It's a worrying thought for anyone who sees these contests as celebrations of human technical achievement.
For now, though, humans have held their ground.
As AI keeps evolving, the balance between human and machine intelligence gets more delicate. Whilst AI programming abilities are expanding rapidly, this contest proved there are still areas where human creativity and resilience can just about edge out even the most sophisticated AI models.
Whether this continues as AI becomes smarter and more autonomous is anyone's guess, but right now, human ingenuity has had its day. Debiak's victory wasn't just about beating a machine - it was about proving that humanity can still adapt and endure, even as technology races ahead at breakneck speed.
Ready to navigate global policies? Secure your overseas future. Get expert guidance now!
Orange background

Try Our AI Features

Explore what Daily8 AI can do for you:

Comments

No comments yet...

Related Articles

The high-schoolers who just beat the world's smartest AI models
The high-schoolers who just beat the world's smartest AI models

Mint

time6 minutes ago

  • Mint

The high-schoolers who just beat the world's smartest AI models

The smartest AI models ever made just went to the most prestigious competition for young mathematicians and managed to achieve the kind of breakthrough that once seemed miraculous. They still got beat by the world's brightest teenagers. Every year, a few hundred elite high-school students from all over the planet gather at the International Mathematical Olympiad. This year, those brilliant minds were joined by Google DeepMind and other companies in the business of artificial intelligence. They had all come for one of the ultimate tests of reasoning, logic and creativity. The famously grueling IMO exam is held over two days and gives students three increasingly difficult problems a day and more than four hours to solve them. The questions span algebra, geometry, number theory and combinatorics—and you can forget about answering them if you're not a math whiz. You'll give your brain a workout just trying to understand them. Because those problems are both complex and unconventional, the annual math test has become a useful benchmark for measuring AI progress from one year to the next. In this age of rapid development, the leading research labs dreamed of a day their systems would be powerful enough to meet the standard for an IMO gold medal, which became the AI equivalent of a four-minute mile. But nobody knew when they would reach that milestone or if they ever would—until now. This year's International Mathematical Olympiad attracted high-school students from all over the world. The unthinkable occurred earlier this month when an AI model from Google DeepMind earned a gold-medal score at IMO by perfectly solving five of the six problems. In another dramatic twist, OpenAI also claimed gold despite not participating in the official event. The companies described their feats as giant leaps toward the future—even if they're not quite there yet. In fact, the most remarkable part of this memorable event is that 26 students got higher scores on the IMO exam than the AI systems. Among them were four stars of the U.S. team, including Qiao (Tiger) Zhang, a two-time gold medalist from California, and Alexander Wang, who brought his third straight gold back to New Jersey. That makes him one of the most decorated young mathematicians of all time—and he's a high-school senior who can go for another gold at IMO next year. But in a year, he might be dealing with a different equation altogether. 'I think it's really likely that AI is going to be able to get a perfect score next year," Wang said. 'That would be insane progress," Zhang said. 'I'm 50-50 on it." So given those odds, will this be remembered as the last IMO when humans outperformed AI? 'It might well be," said Thang Luong, the leader of Google DeepMind's team. Until very recently, what happened in Australia would have sounded about as likely as koalas doing calculus. But the inconceivable began to feel almost inevitable last year, when DeepMind's models built for math solved four problems and racked up 28 points for a silver medal, just one point short of gold. This year, the IMO officially invited a select group of tech companies to their own competition, giving them the same problems as the students and having coordinators grade their solutions with the same rubric. They were eager for the challenge. AI models are trained on unfathomable amounts of information—so if anything has been done before, the chances are they can figure out how to do it again. But they can struggle with problems they have never seen before. As it happens, the IMO process is specifically designed to come up with those original and unconventional problems. In addition to being novel, the problems also have to be interesting and beautiful, said IMO president Gregor Dolinar. If a problem under consideration is similar to 'any other problem published anywhere in the world," he said, it gets tossed. By the time students take the exam, the list of a few hundred suggested problems has been whittled down to six. Meanwhile, the DeepMind team kept improving the AI system it would bring to IMO, an unreleased version of Google's advanced reasoning model Gemini Deep Think, and it was still making tweaks in the days leading up to the competition. The effort was led by Thang Luong, a senior staff research scientist who narrowly missed getting to IMO in high school with Vietnam's team. He finally made it to IMO last year—with Google. Before he returned this year, DeepMind executives asked about the possibility of gold. He told them to expect bronze or silver again. He adjusted his expectations when DeepMind's model nailed all three problems on the first day. The simplicity, elegance and sheer readability of those solutions astonished mathematicians. The next day, as soon as Luong and his colleagues realized their AI creation had crushed two more proofs, they also realized that would be enough for gold. They celebrated their monumental accomplishment by doing one thing the other medalists couldn't: They cracked open a bottle of whiskey. Key members of Google DeepMind's gold-medal-winning team, including Thang Luong, second from left. To keep the focus on students, the companies at IMO agreed not to release their results until later this month. But as soon as the Olympiad's closing ceremony ended, one company declared that its AI model had struck gold—and it wasn't DeepMind. It was OpenAI. The company wasn't a part of the IMO event, but OpenAI gave its latest experimental reasoning model all six problems and enlisted former medalists to grade the proofs. Like DeepMind's, OpenAI's system flawlessly solved five and scored 35 out of 42 points to meet the gold standard. After the OpenAI victory lap on social media, the embargo was lifted and DeepMind told the world about its own triumph—and that its performance was certified by the IMO. Not long ago, it was hard to imagine AI rivals dueling for glory like this. In 2021, a Ph.D. student named Alexander Wei was part of a study that asked him to predict the state of AI math by July 2025—that is, right now. When he looked at the other forecasts, he thought they were much too optimistic. As it turned out, they weren't nearly optimistic enough. Now he's living proof of just how wrong he was: Wei is the research scientist who led the IMO project for OpenAI. The only thing more impressive than what the AI systems did was how they did it. Google called its result a major advance, though not because DeepMind won gold instead of silver. Last year, the model needed the problems to be translated into a computer programming language for math proofs. This year, it operated entirely in 'natural language" without any human intervention. DeepMind also crushed the exam within the IMO time limit of 4 ½ hours after taking several days of computation just a year ago. You might find all of this completely terrifying—and think of AI as competition. The humans behind the models see them as complementary. 'This could perhaps be a new calculator," Luong said, 'that powers the next generation of mathematicians." Speaking of that next generation, the IMO gold medalists have already been overshadowed by AI. So let's put them back in the spotlight. Team USA at the International Mathematical Olympiad, including Alexander Wang, fourth from right, and Tiger Zhang, with the stuffed red panda on his head. Qiao Zhang is a 17-year-old student in Los Angeles on his way to MIT to study math and computer science. As a young boy, his family moved to the U.S. from China and his parents gave him a choice of two American names. He picked Tiger over Elephant. His career in competitive math began in second grade, when he entered a contest called the Math Kangaroo. It ended this month at the math Olympics next to a hotel in Australia with actual kangaroos. When he sat down at his desk with a pen and lots of scratch paper, Zhang spent the longest amount of time during the exam on Problem 6. It was a problem in the notoriously tricky field of combinatorics, the branch of mathematics that deals with counting, arranging and combining discrete objects, and it was easily the hardest on this year's test. The solution required the ingenuity, creativity and intuition that humans can muster but machines cannot—at least not yet. 'I would actually be a bit scared if the AI models could do stuff on Problem 6," he said. Problem 6 did stump DeepMind and OpenAI's models, but it wasn't just problematic for AI. Of the 630 student contestants, 569 also received zero points. Only six received the full credit of seven points. Zhang was proud of his partial solution that earned four points—which was four more than almost everyone else. At this year's IMO, 72 contestants went home with gold. But for some, a medal wasn't their only prize. Zhang was among those who left with another keepsake: victory over the AI models. (As if it weren't enough that he can bend numbers to his will, he also has a way with words and wrote this about his IMO experience.) In the end, the six members of the U.S. team piled up five golds and one silver, finishing second overall behind the Chinese after knocking them off the top spot last year. There was once a time when such precocious math students grew up to become professors. (Or presidents—the recently elected president of Romania was a two-time IMO gold medalist with perfect scores.) While many still choose academia, others get recruited by algorithmic trading firms and hedge funds, where their quantitative brains have never been so highly valued. This year, the U.S. team was supported by Jane Street while XTX Markets sponsored the whole event. After all, they will soon be competing with each other—and with the richest tech companies—for their intellectual talents. By then, AI might be destroying mere humans at math. But not if you ask Junehyuk Jung. A former IMO gold medalist himself, Jung is now an associate professor at Brown University and visiting researcher at DeepMind who worked on its gold-medal model. He doesn't believe this was humanity's last stand, though. He thinks problems like Problem 6 will flummox AI for at least another decade. And he walked away from perhaps the most significant math contest in history feeling bullish on all kinds of intelligence. 'There are things AI will do very well," he said. 'There are still going to be things that humans can do better." Write to Ben Cohen at

TCS to axe 12,000 jobs; IT giant's biggest layoff ever
TCS to axe 12,000 jobs; IT giant's biggest layoff ever

Time of India

time10 minutes ago

  • Time of India

TCS to axe 12,000 jobs; IT giant's biggest layoff ever

TCS to axe 12,000 jobs; IT giant's biggest layoff ever BENGALURU/MUMBAI: In what will be its biggest layoff to date, India's largest IT services company and Tata Group's most-profitable unit, TCS, will axe 12,261 jobs, which is approximately 2% of its workforce as AI-led disruptions and macro uncertainties affect business demand. TCS, chaired by N Chandrasekaran, had just over 6.1 lakh employees worldwide as of June. The company has been periodically restructuring its workforce in response to changing business dynamics and other factors. In FY15, it eliminated more than 3,000 jobs, representing about 1% of its total employee count. The latest job cuts will primarily affect mid-level and senior executives. This move marks one of the company's most significant strategic shifts: embracing AI, and letting go of employees who cannot be redeployed within the firm. The workforce reduction — long considered rare in the industry — underscores the tough demand environment, especially in the absence of large deals like BSNL. Industry observers see this as an early sign of a broader shift, where rising reliance on automation and margin pressures are driving companies to reduce employee costs. TCS said the restructuring initiative is aimed at transforming the company into a future-ready organisation. by Taboola by Taboola Sponsored Links Sponsored Links Promoted Links Promoted Links You May Like Mini House for 60 sqm for Seniors with Toilet and Bath (Price May Surprise You) Pre Fabricated Homes | Search Ads Search Now Undo 'This includes strategic initiatives on multiple fronts, and while these changes are necessary for our growth and evolution, we understand the impact on our colleagues. We thank them for their service and are committed to supporting them through this transition,' TCS CEO K Krithivasan said in an email to employees. Phil Fersht, CEO of HfS Research, said the impact of AI is eating into the people-heavy services model and forcing the large providers to rebalance their workforces to maintain their margins and stay price competitive in a cut-throat market where clients are demanding 20-30% price reductions on deals. Other Tata Group entities, such as Tata Steel and Tata Motors, have also been cutting jobs periodically to lower costs and enhance profitability. In 2019, Tata Steel eliminated 3,000 jobs in its European operations. Stay informed with the latest business news, updates on bank holidays and public holidays . AI Masterclass for Students. Upskill Young Ones Today!– Join Now

BYD runs India remotely as China tensions shut out top brass
BYD runs India remotely as China tensions shut out top brass

Time of India

time36 minutes ago

  • Time of India

BYD runs India remotely as China tensions shut out top brass

China's BYD Co. is forging ahead with its attempts to expand in India despite roadblocks from the government that are preventing the electric vehicle maker from conducting key business dealings there. Like most Chinese companies, BYD has been unable to obtain visas for executives after a deadly clash between Indian and Chinese soldiers along a disputed Himalayan border in 2020 sparked a major deterioration in political ties. That's seen the EV giant resort to holding board meetings and high-level business interactions in Colombo in Sri Lanka and Kathmandu in Nepal, and even as far away as Singapore, according to people familiar with the matter. Explore courses from Top Institutes in Please select course: Select a Course Category Healthcare Design Thinking CXO healthcare Management PGDM Data Analytics Technology MCA Public Policy Degree Data Science MBA Operations Management Finance Others Leadership Cybersecurity Product Management Digital Marketing Artificial Intelligence Data Science Project Management others Skills you'll gain: Financial Analysis in Healthcare Financial Management & Investing Strategic Management in Healthcare Process Design & Analysis Duration: 12 Weeks Indian School of Business Certificate Program in Healthcare Management Starts on Jun 13, 2024 Get Details Ketsu Zhang, BYD's managing director for India, has been unable to obtain a work permit since he left the EV maker's local base in Chennai, despite government efforts to facilitate his travel, said the people, who asked not to be identified because they're not authorized to speak publicly. by Taboola by Taboola Sponsored Links Sponsored Links Promoted Links Promoted Links You May Like Kalimanggis: New Container Houses (Prices May Surprise You) Container House | Search ads Search Now Undo Zhang worked from the carmaker's headquarters in Shenzhen in 2021 before moving to Tokyo this year, they said. From Japan, he oversees Asian markets including India, the people said. Also Read: Chinese carmaker BYD launches smartphone-car connectivity feature Live Events An on-the-ground presence is particularly important for manufacturers, given the need for quick decision making, addressing productivity issues and establishing community ties. Cold Shoulder The cold shoulder is mutual. As recently as March, travel restrictions were still being wielded in the political spat. That month, an Indian contingent wanting to visit a major meeting of BYD car dealers in Shenzhen had to be scaled down after the majority of participants, including the company's employees based in India, were unable to obtain visas, a person familiar with the matter said. A representative for BYD in India declined to comment. Despite the operational difficulties, BYD has proved popular with Indian drivers — sales in the first half of this year are nearly touching the total units sold in 2024. Also Read: Tesla's long-awaited India debut bets on luxury vehicle buyers Indian officials have been clear they won't welcome investment from the carmaker — Commerce Minister Piyush Goyal said earlier this year that it's a 'no' to BYD due to caution around the nation's strategic interests. India has already rejected BYD's $1 billion plan to build a plant in partnership with a local company. This leaves the Chinese firm unable to qualify for reduced tariffs on imported EVs in exchange for establishing a substantial manufacturing presence in India. The freeze contrasts with the experience of Tesla Inc. Its Chief Executive Officer Elon Musk met with India's Prime Minister Narendra Modi in the US earlier this year. The US carmaker opened its first showrooms in India this month, with deliveries set to begin as early as August. Tesla doesn't have plans to establish local manufacturing, meaning it faces import taxes of as much as 110% for fully-assembled vehicles. Expanding overseas is critical for BYD, which risks missing its target to sell 5.5 million cars this year as demand in China stagnates and it draws the ire of Beijing following rounds of heavy price discounting. But without the ability to invest in manufacturing in India, BYD relies on its assembly plant in the southern city of Chennai, which has annual capacity of 10,000 to 15,000 units, to meet Indian demand. Hefty Duties The company also imports most cars it sells in India, but hefty duties — aimed at shielding domestic firms — effectively double the cost of a vehicle and India restricts volumes unless a model has received a local roadworthiness certificate. While tensions between China and India are thawing, it's unclear whether curbs on professional visas will be lifted or if BYD will ever be welcomed with open arms. Still, there are tentative signs of progress. Earlier this month, India allowed Chinese nationals to apply for tourist visas again.

DOWNLOAD THE APP

Get Started Now: Download the App

Ready to dive into a world of global content with local flavor? Download Daily8 app today from your preferred app store and start exploring.
app-storeplay-store