Meet the world's best programmer: A Polish man who beat ChatGPT
Przemysław Dębiak, 42, is the only human in the world to beat ChatGPT in the most prestigious programming competition AtCoder World Tour Finals 2025 (Heuristic Division), which was held in Tokyo earlier this month.
The Pole won the elite tournament ahead of 11 other participants, including one particular competitor - a specially prepared algorithm by OpenAI. The company's algorithm ranked in second place. The advantage over ChatGPT grew from an initial 5.5 per cent to a final 9.5, which makes the scale of success all the more remarkable.
"He is a very humble man and is very happy that he managed not only to win, but also to beat OpenAI, where he used to work," - innovation design expert Stanislaw Eysmont, a friend of Debiak's, told Euronews Next.
Psyho: "Humanity has won (so far)!".
The competition lasted ten hours and required participants to solve complex optimisation problems. The task was to improve the designated code as much as possible - optimising it and making it more efficient.
"I am completely exhausted. I realised that I've slept maybe 10 hours in the last three days and I'm barely alive," confessed Debiak in a post on the X social media platform after the results were announced.
He prefaced these words with a significant sentence: "Humanity has won (so far)!".
The Pole's success was also appreciated by OpenAI's CEO Sam Altman. "Good job psyho," he wrote on X.
Stanislaw Eysmont commented on his feat as follows:
"10 hours of intellectual marathon. No ready-made solutions, no documentation, no prompts," said Eysmont.
"There was only one thing: a complex optimisation problem, real in its nature, which cannot be 'solved well' - only better than others. It was in this environment - full of tension, strategy and brilliance - that Przemek beat everyone. Including... the artificial intelligence that came second. Yes. Today, man beats AI".
The world's most elite competition
The AtCoder World Tour Finals is a tournament that experts consider to be the most prestigious competition in the field of so-called programming heuristics. Only the best - the 12 highest-rated programmers in the world - take part. It is not possible to apply for the competition; you may receive an invitation based on the rankings.
The competition involves solving optimisation problems at the highest level of difficulty. It is a combination of algorithmics, statistics, AI theory and creativity. It is not enough to know the algorithms - you still need to be able to use them in a way that even a machine cannot predict.
Secondary education, no full-time job, would-be DJ and poker player
Dębiak was born on 28 July 1983 in Gdynia. He is a multiple winner of international programming competitions and an expert in algorithmics and AI. He is also a member of Mensa and a multiple Polish champion in puzzle solving.
During an AMA session on the Polish website Wykop, he revealed some unusual facts about himself. Among them:
1. "I have never worked a full-time job".
2. "I am a university drop-out, which means I have a de facto secondary education".
3."When I was a kid, I wanted to be a superhero. It didn't work out".
4. "I never had an idea for life and, in fact, I still don't". - he wrote, also adding that at various times he had thought about becoming a game developer, actor, DJ or professional poker player, among other professions.
5. Debiak lives in Poland and said "has no intention of moving away for the time being".
For the Pole, victory could be tantamount to opening up even more professional wickets.
As Eysmont explained, the competition is followed by the world's biggest technology companies and is seen as an indicator of "who really understands how code thinks".
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