Latest news with #Olympiad
Yahoo
2 hours ago
- Business
- Yahoo
AI Takes Gold at Math's Toughest Test
Google (NASDAQ:GOOG) says its latest Gemini Deep Think model read the official IMO problems in plain English and wrote out full proofs in just four and a half hours. It scored 35 out of 42 pointsthe first time any AI has hit gold?medal level at the Olympiad. Not to be outdone, OpenAI quietly posted on X that its experimental reasoning model matched that feat. Three former IMO medalists checked the proofs and unanimously gave it the same 35?point score, all under the same no?internet, no?tools conditions. Google plans to share the model with a few trusted mathematicians before rolling it out to subscribers. OpenAI calls its gold?level system purely experimental and won't release anything this powerful for several months. Advertisement This is a big deal because it shows AI can handle real, structured problem solving. We might soon see AI helping students learn advanced math, researchers verify proofs in a flash, or even new kinds of math competitions where humans and machines go head to head. This article first appeared on GuruFocus.
Leaders
4 hours ago
- Science
- Leaders
Saudi Biology Team Competes in 2025 International Biology Olympiad in Philippines
The Saudi national biology team is taking part in the 36th International Biology Olympiad (IBO 2025), held in Manila, the capital of the Philippines, from July 20 to 27. The event brings together top-performing high school students from around the world. Representing Saudi Arabia in this prestigious scientific competition are four students who earned their spots after completing an intensive training program exceeding 2,800 hours each. This program was conducted under the supervision of the King Abdulaziz and His Companions Foundation for Giftedness and Creativity (Mawhiba), in strategic partnership with the Ministry of Education. The IBO is an annual global competition that challenges talented high school students in various areas of biology. First launched in 1990 in the Czech Republic, the Olympiad assesses participants through rigorous theoretical and practical exams, designed to test their problem-solving skills across multiple biological disciplines. Related Topics : KAUST Celebrates Women in Science International Day Saudi Team for Science and Engineering Collect 9 Special Awards to Make History in ISEF 2024 Saudi Arabia is surviving financial liberation thanks to the realism of Mohammed bin Salman: Morad al-Hattab: Short link :
Indian Express
6 hours ago
- Entertainment
- Indian Express
Divya Deshmukh's emergence and Koneru Humpy's resurgence: 2 takeaways for Indian chess evident at FIDE World Cup
The two India vs China semifinals — Koneru Humpy vs Lei Tingjie and Divya Deshmukh vs Tan Zhongyi — ended in contrasting draws on Tuesday at the FIDE Women's World Cup. Both contests are evenly poised heading into the second day of the two-game battle at Batumi. While Divya's draw was short and quick, Humpy pulled out a new trick from her hat to unsettle her opponent before settling for a draw. Such are the high standards that Indians set for themselves; even a draw against the world's best is now unimpressive in their own eyes as was evident from Divya's body language. Asked by FIDE if she was happy, particularly since she had the black pieces, Divya only offered: 'It's okay, I guess.' 'It was quite a short draw, so I don't really have many thoughts about the game,' shrugged the 19-year-old, who's yet to become a GM, after going toe-to-toe and holding her own against a player who was the women's world champion eight years ago. In the three previous games between the pair, the veteran Tan has won twice with Divya salvaging a draw in the final battle. Ask GM Abhijit Kunte, who has seen Divya's rapid rise from close quarters, what that unimpressed reply says about Divya's mindset, and he says: 'In these kinds of mini-matches (games of two), you don't express anything. Because any positive or negative expression is bad for you. You have to remain neutral. And this kind of maturity at 19 is not easy to get. It's very rare.' Kunte, who was the captain of the all-conquering Indian's women's team at the Chess Olympiad last year where Divya was one of the stars, traces her lightning-quick journey to the top: 'Just last year, Divya was a world junior champion. She has always been very brave, someone never afraid to experiment. But she had very limited exposure to the top brass of women's chess. Then she played at the Olympiad last year. This year, she's played in the FIDE Grand Prix events, which has helped immensely.' So far, Divya has had a barnstorming FIDE World Cup, taking down the veteran grandmaster Harika Dronavalli in the quarters, and World No 6 Zhu Jiner in the previous two rounds. Divya has also shown other stand-out attributes on the board. GM Shyamsundar Mohanraj, who is the head of delegation for the Indian team in Batumi and has given the country its last two GMs, points at her victory over the veteran Harika Dronavalli in the previous round via tiebreaks. ❓Who's your pick for the finals? Game 1 of the semifinals was played today — and both ended in draws! 🇨🇳 Lei Tingjie ½–½ Humpy Koneru 🇮🇳 🇨🇳 Tan Zhongyi ½–½ Divya Deshmukh 🇮🇳 #FIDEWorldCup — International Chess Federation (@FIDE_chess) July 22, 2025 'I say this as an outsider, but Divya's endgame skills and her defensive skills have improved quite a lot in a very short span of time. In the first game against Harika of the tiebreaks, she played dynamic chess to win. But if you look at the second game, she defended very well in a minus position (a position where she had a disadvantage). In Game 2 of the tie-breaks, Divya defended very well despite being low on time. She was barely playing with seconds on the clock, and Harika had like 4-5 minutes. There was pressure because Divya was in a don't-lose situation,' says Shyamsundar. At the other end of the spectrum is the veteran Humpy, who has already accounted for Alexandra Kosteniuk, one of the strongest players in the field, and the up-and-coming Chinese prodigy Song Yuxin. While Divya has stunned higher-rated opponents to script a fairytale story already, Humpy has been clinical: only once in the event has she needed tiebreaks to beat her opponent. In the first game of the semi-final against Lei on Tuesday, Humpy played the Berlin Defence, which she has rarely employed over the course of her lengthy career. In fact, one of the only times she's played it was against Kosteniuk in the previous rounds. On Tuesday, it had the desired effect; it forced Lei to think for about 10 minutes after 4… Ne7, a well-known trap door. 'Three years back, I thought Humpy looked like she was on the verge of quitting. But in the last year, she has come back so strongly. Winning a medal at the World Rapid Championship, then being among the top places in the Women's Grand Prix. Her game is also very positive now: she doesn't agree to quick draws. At this age, many people try to make some quick draws and win some easy games and try to finish in the top. But she's fighting it out. That shows her positive attitude and aggression. It's like seeing a very young Humpy again,' says Kunte before adding with a smile: 'I think Humpy is trying to match Divya's age. And Divya is trying to match Humpy's experience and maturity.' What makes Humpy's resurgence and Divya's emergence at the FIDE World Cup even more remarkable, points out GM Shyamsundar, is how tricky the World Cup is for any player, thanks to the treacherous format of two head-to-head battles and then tiebreaks if needed. 'The format is quite intense and very exhausting for the players. It's a best-of-2 battle. It's a dangerous format in a way and tricky. It's not like other Swiss tournaments (where you don't get eliminated) where even if you lose, you have an extra game to come back. But here, it's not like that. You never know when you will be leaving the tournament,' says Shyamsundar from Batumi. Besides Humpy's resurgence and Divya's emergence, there have been other moments to cheer for Indian chess in Batumi. Like Vantika Agrawal taking down former women's world champion Anna Ushenina. Or four Indians making it to the quarters (R Vaishali and Harika beside Humpy and Divya). He looks at the Indian players' performances and predicts a golden era like the one that men's chess is seeing in India. 'In India, despite the population, we have only had three women who have become GMs. But after seeing the results of these two players from different eras at the World Cup, players of any age in India will get inspired. This will definitely inspire and motivate many women players to take up sports,' says Shyamsundar. Amit Kamath is Assistant Editor at The Indian Express and is based in Mumbai. ... Read More
South China Morning Post
a day ago
- Science
- South China Morning Post
Google and OpenAI's AI models win milestone gold at International Mathematical Olympiad
Alphabet's Google and OpenAI said their artificial intelligence models won gold medals at a global mathematics competition, signalling a breakthrough in maths capabilities in the race to build powerful systems that can rival human intelligence. Advertisement The results marked the first time that AI systems crossed the gold-medal scoring threshold at the International Mathematical Olympiad (IMO) for high-school students. Both companies' models solved five out of six problems, achieving the result using general-purpose 'reasoning' models that processed mathematical concepts using natural language, in contrast to the previous approaches used by AI firms. The achievement suggests AI is less than a year away from being used by mathematicians to crack unsolved research problems at the frontier of the field, according to Junehyuk Jung, a maths professor at Brown University and visiting researcher in Google's DeepMind AI unit. 'I think the moment we can solve hard reasoning problems in natural language will enable the potential for collaboration between AI and mathematicians,' Jung said. 02:19 Is AI better at maths than mathematicians? Is AI better at maths than mathematicians? OpenAI's breakthrough was achieved with a new experimental model centred on massively scaling up 'test-time compute.' This was done by both allowing the model to 'think' for longer periods and deploying parallel computing power to run numerous lines of reasoning simultaneously, according to Noam Brown, researcher at OpenAI.
Yahoo
a day ago
- Business
- Yahoo
OpenAI and Google outdo the mathletes, but not each other
AI models from OpenAI and Google DeepMind achieved gold medal scores in the 2025 International Math Olympiad (IMO), one of the world's oldest and most challenging high school level math competitions, the companies independently announced in recent days. The result underscores just how fast AI systems are advancing, and yet, how evenly matched Google and OpenAI seem to be in the AI race. AI companies are competing fiercely for the public perception of being ahead in the AI race: an intangible battle of 'vibes' that can have big implications for securing top AI talent. A lot of AI researchers come from backgrounds in competitive math, so benchmarks like IMO mean more than others. Last year, Google scored a silver medal at IMO using a 'formal' system, meaning it required humans to translate problems into a machine‑readable format. This year, both OpenAI and Google entered 'informal' systems into the competition, which were able to ingest questions and generate proof‑based answers in natural language. Both companies claim their AI models correctly answered five out of six questions on IMO's test, scoring higher than most high school students and Google's AI model from last year, without requiring any human-machine translation. In interviews with TechCrunch, researchers behind OpenAI and Google's IMO efforts claimed that these gold medal performances represent breakthroughs around AI reasoning models in non-verifiable domains. While AI reasoning models tend to do well on questions with straightforward answers, such as simple math or coding tasks, these systems struggle on tasks with more ambiguous solutions, such as buying a great chair or helping with complex research. However, Google is raising questions around how OpenAI conducted and announced its gold medal IMO performance. After all, if you're going to enter AI models into a math contest for high schoolers, you might as well argue like teenagers. Shortly after OpenAI announced its feat on Saturday morning, Google DeepMind's CEO and researchers took to social media to slam OpenAI for announcing its gold‑medal prematurely — shortly after IMO announced which high schoolers had won the competition on Friday night — and for not having their model's test officially evaluated by IMO. Thang Luong, a Google DeepMind senior researcher and lead for the IMO project, told TechCrunch that Google waited to announce its IMO results to respect the students participating in the competition. Luong said that Google has been working with IMO's organizers since last year in preparation for the test and wanted to have the IMO president's blessing and official grading before announcing its official results, which it did on Monday morning. 'The IMO organizers have their grading guideline,' Luong said. 'So any evaluation that's not based on that guideline could not make any claim about gold-medal level [performance].' Noam Brown, a senior OpenAI researcher who worked on the IMO model, told TechCrunch that IMO reached out to OpenAI a few months ago about participating in a formal math competition, but the ChatGPT-maker declined because it was working on natural language systems that it thought were more worth pursuing. Brown says OpenAI didn't know IMO was conducting an informal test with Google. OpenAI says it hired third-party evaluators — three former IMO medalists who understood the grading system — to grade its AI model's performance. After OpenAI learned of its gold medal score, Brown said the company reached out to IMO, which then told the company to wait to announce until after IMO's Friday night award ceremony. IMO did not respond to TechCrunch's request for comment. Google isn't necessarily wrong here — it did go through a more official, rigorous process to achieve its gold medal score — but the debate may miss the bigger picture: AI models from several leading AI labs are improving quickly. Countries from around the world sent their brightest students to compete at IMO this year, and just a few percent of them scored as well as OpenAI and Google's AI models did. While OpenAI used to have a significant lead over the industry, it certainly feels as though the race is more closely matched than any company would like to admit. OpenAI is expected to release GPT-5 in the coming months, and the company certainly hopes to give off the impression that it still leads the AI industry. Error in retrieving data Sign in to access your portfolio Error in retrieving data Error in retrieving data Error in retrieving data Error in retrieving data
