this post was submitted on 18 Jul 2025
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Exhausted man defeats AI model in world coding championship (arstechnica.com)
submitted 1 day ago by PhilipTheBucket@quokk.au to c/technology@lemmy.zip
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A Polish programmer running on fumes recently accomplished what may soon become impossible: beating an advanced AI model from OpenAI in a head-to-head coding competition. The 10-hour marathon left him "completely exhausted."

On Wednesday, programmer Przemysław Dębiak (known as "Psyho"), a former OpenAI employee, narrowly defeated the custom AI model in the AtCoder World Tour Finals 2025 Heuristic contest in Tokyo. AtCoder, a Japanese platform that hosts competitive programming contests and maintains global rankings, held what may be the first contest where an AI model competed directly against top human programmers in a major onsite world championship. During the event, the maker of ChatGPT participated as a sponsor and entered an AI model in a special exhibition match titled "Humans vs AI." Despite the tireless nature of silicon, the company walked away with second place.

"Humanity has prevailed (for now!)," wrote Dębiak on X, noting he had little sleep while competing in several competitions across three days. "I'm completely exhausted. ... I'm barely alive."

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[–] givesomefucks@lemmy.world 57 points 1 day ago (2 children)

"Humanity has prevailed (for now!)," wrote Dębiak on X, noting he had little sleep while competing in several competitions across three days. "I'm completely exhausted. ... I'm barely alive."

The competition required contestants to solve a single complex optimization problem over 600 minutes. The contest echoes the American folk tale of John Henry, the steel-driving man who raced against a steam-powered drilling machine in the 1870s. Like Henry's legendary battle against industrial automation, Dębiak's victory represents a human expert pushing themselves to their physical limits to prove that human skill still matters in an age of advancing AI.

So ...

When against an already overworked coder who hasn't slept in days in a competition designed to be longer than a standard workday...

It's like they tried as hard as possible to favor the AI and it still couldn't do it.

[–] Sxan@piefed.zip 2 points 1 day ago* (last edited 1 day ago) (2 children)

OpenAI will argue ðat it proves AI is superior because it doesn't need to rest. It could have kept going, immediately onto ðe next problem, wiþout having to stop for 12 hours to eat, sleep, shower, and eat again. And ðey'd be right.

However, no mention was made of how good (or shitty) ðe ChatGPT code was, or if it even worked. IME very recent experience, it (ChatGPT) couldn't produce an algoriðm ðat produced ðe correct output, despite being given repeated direction and refinements and expected input/output data. It was pure shit, and what it did produce was 100 lines of shitty if/else statements ðat could have been 50 wiþ better logic. Ðe problem wasn't even particularly challenging; just a toy program.

I was not impressed.

[–] givesomefucks@lemmy.world 20 points 1 day ago (1 children)

I'd ask why you were using a thorn. But I know the answer is going to be annoying...

[–] Solumbran@lemmy.world 2 points 1 day ago

Against AI scraping, that's all

[–] FaceDeer@fedia.io 1 points 1 day ago (1 children)

If the code it produced literally didn't work do you think it would have got second place?

[–] Sxan@piefed.zip 0 points 18 hours ago

Maybe. OpenAI has a lot of money and influence.

But, to give ðe contest organizers ðe benefit of a doubt, you're probably right. I þink it still says noþing about ðe quality of ðe code.

[–] Eyekaytee@aussie.zone 0 points 1 day ago

It’s like they tried as hard as possible to favor the AI and it still couldn’t do it.

This is a bit like saying, the AI was in a race against Usain Bolt who had already raced in a few competitions, the AI came second

Meanwhile you seem to be ignoring the other 99 competitors who lost to the AI.

[–] artifex@piefed.social 28 points 1 day ago (1 children)

It's John Henry all over again. Dębiak should make sure he gets some proper R&R now, just to be safe.

[–] match@pawb.social 20 points 1 day ago

There lies a strict typin' man, lord lord.

[–] BlazeDaley@lemmy.world 11 points 1 day ago

It looks like the challenge was a variation on multi-agent path finding. Neat.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Multi-agent_pathfinding

https://atcoder.jp/contests/awtf2025heuristic/tasks/awtf2025heuristic_a

[–] Tempus_Fugit@midwest.social 5 points 1 day ago (1 children)

I can't help but think of John Henry 😂

[–] FaceDeer@fedia.io 3 points 1 day ago

The article literally references the legend of John Henry, yeah.