Latest news with #Psyho
Euronews
13 hours ago
- Euronews
Meet the world's best programmer: A Polish man who beat ChatGPT
A Polish programmer known as 'Psyho' has made world computer science history and beaten 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".
Digital Trends
2 days ago
- Digital Trends
Human wins coding contest … but AI finishes a close second
'Humanity has prevailed (for now!),' so said Polish programmer Przemysław Dębiak after emerging victorious in a coding contest whose competitors included an advanced AI model created by AI giant OpenAI. Dębiak, who happens to be a former employee of OpenAI, was showing off his programming skills at the AtCoder World Tour Finals held in Tokyo last week. Recommended Videos The 10-hour session left the Pole, who competed under the name Psyho, feeling 'completely exhausted' and 'barely alive,' according to a post on X. As for the AI model, well, presumably it felt just fine and could've carried on without complaint. It's believed to be the first coding contest to have allowed the participation of an AI model, with the technology gaining prominence for its rapidly improving programming smarts. OpenAI's AI model participated as part of a special 'Humans vs AI' exhibition match conducted within the Heuristic division of the contest. Called OpenAIAHC, the AI model took on 12 top-ranking human programmers — with Dębiak among them — on a 10-hour optimization challenge. The Polish programmer managed to finish in first place by a margin of just over 9%, with the AI placing second — ahead of all of the other human contestants. Interestingly, Dębiak said in comments after the contest that it was the AI model's presence that motivated him to keep going, as he could see during the match-up that he was just ahead of the model, and he very much wanted to keep it that way. Without the AI's participation, his score would have been 'much, much lower,' Dębiak told Business Insider. The AI's impressive performance is a clear demonstration that advanced AI is making real progress when it comes to edging out the world's best human programmers in open-ended, creative problem-solving tasks. Indeed, it's hard to think that it won't come out on top at next year's contest … if it's invited back, that is.
Hans India
2 days ago
- Sport
- Hans India
Human beats AI in Tokyo coding contest!
Tokyo: Atthe 2025 AtCoder World Tour Finals' Heuristic Challenge held in Tokyo, renowned coder Przemysław Dębiak — widely recognized in the programming world as 'Psyho' and a former member of the OpenAI team — edged out the specially designed AI model in a tightly contested battle. Hosted in Tokyo by the esteemed Japanese competitive programming site AtCoder, this year's grand finale introduced a unique twist — a 'Humans vs AI' showdown. Considered the pinnacle of invitation-only programming competitions, this elite tournament welcomes just 12 of the highest-ranked coders annually, chosen through rigorous qualification 10 hours, the event tasked participants with tackling one exceptionally difficult optimization problem—completely unaided, with no access to libraries, documentation, or outside help. Though the AI took an early lead, Dębiak ultimately overtook it. Although AI initially pulled ahead, Dębiak eventually surpassed it by drawing purely on his instincts, creativity, and deep expertise. Fellow coder Stanisław Eysmont commented, 'Przemek succeeded without pre-built tools, without reference materials, and without any guidance.' 'I was so tired. I actually felt at some point that I should take a break,' Dębiak, who competed under the name 'Psyho,' told the reporters. 'But at the same time, I was very close to getting a score comparable to the model,' he added. In a historic first, the contest opened its doors to an AI competitor, with OpenAI not only sponsoring the event but also entering its custom AHC model as an official participant. To ensure fairness between human participants and the AI system built by OpenAI, AtCoder supplied standardized hardware to all contenders. The rules of the tournament allowed the use of any programming language supported on the AtCoder platform, and there were no penalties for incorrect submissions. Dębiak was also instrumental during his tenure at OpenAI, serving as one of the pioneering engineers behind OpenAI Five—the AI system that famously triumphed over professional Dota 2 players in 2019. In a post shared on the social media platform X, OpenAI CEO Sam Altman acknowledged Dębiak's win and wrote, "good job Psyho." OpenAI also publicly recognised its tool's performance on X, stating, "Our model took 2nd place at the AtCoder Heuristics World Finals! Congrats to the champion for holding us off this time."
Business Insider
4 days ago
- Business
- Business Insider
A programmer beat an OpenAI tool at coding. He says the AI made him push himself to win.
AI hasn't yet killed the coding star. On Wednesday, a programmer from Poland, Przemysław Dębiak, beat an OpenAI tool at the AtCoder World Tour Finals 2025 Heuristic Contest in Tokyo, which is sponsored by the company. "I was so tired. I actually felt at some point that I should take a break," Dębiak, who competed under the name "Psyho," told Business Insider over a video call on Friday. "But at the same time, I was very close to getting a score comparable to the model," he added. That pushed him to dig deep, using "all the remaining energy" to beat the AI. "I'm trying to give 100% of what I have and try to stay alive," he said, adding that without OpenAI's model, his score "would be much, much lower." Dębiak's victory drew the attention of OpenAI CEO Sam Altman. In a post on X on Wednesday, Altman wrote, "good job psyho." When reached for comment, OpenAI directed BI to a post on X, where it had written, "Our model took 2nd place at the AtCoder Heuristics World Finals! Congrats to the champion for holding us off this time." The contest is held annually and run by AtCoder, a Japan-based competitive programming site. Yoichi Iwata, the competition's administrator, told BI that OpenAI's model outperformed those who used similar approaches, but Dębiak "arrived at a completely different solution." "We expected a human to win, and were rather surprised that the AI was able to secure second place," Iwata added. "While the AI surpassed humans in terms of optimization ability, we believe it still fell short of human creativity." The competition's results page shows Dębiak prevailing over competitors from Japan, Georgia, and France. On Friday, Dębiak shared a results page on X that showed him as the competition's victor and OpenAI in second place. "The results are official now and my lead over AI increased from 5.5% to 9.5%," he wrote. Update: I'm alive and well The results are official now and my lead over AI increased from 5.5% to 9.5%😎 Honestly, the hype feels kind of bizarre. Never expected so many people would be interested in programming contests. Guess this means I should drop in here more often👀 — Psyho (@FakePsyho) July 17, 2025 After winning the competition on Wednesday, Dębiak celebrated his win online, writing, "Humanity has prevailed (for now!)", adding that he was "completely exhausted" after just 10 hours of sleep in three days. He told BI he flew from Warsaw to Tokyo for the competition. The programmer wrote on X that he did not use AI tools, just "regular" Visual Studio Code, a software development platform, with "some basic autocomplete to speed up repetitive stuff." Dębiak, 41, told BI he only found out about OpenAI's entry a week before the contest. "No one knew that this would be, to some extent, an exhibition match between humans and AI," he said. The stars aligned for the human AI will win in cases that require straightforward engineering — implementing algorithms, solving the problem, and optimizing code — because it's simply faster, Dębiak told BI. But in longer contests where programmers "do everything from scratch," he said, AI has a harder time keeping up. "The longer the contest is, the more chances for humans and less chances for AI," he said, adding that he overtook OpenAI's tool near the end of the 10-hour competition. Dębiak said he competed in "algorithmic optimization," where the goal was to write the most efficient solution to a complex problem. In this competition, he had to code a program that guided robots across a 30x30 grid using the fewest moves possible. Reflecting on the competition, Dębiak said the variables lined up in his favor. "It's easy to imagine a different problem where AI would win and all the humans would be like far, far away," he added. AI has famously beaten humans in other high-profile competitions. In 1997, IBM's Deep Blue AI machine beat chess grandmaster Gary Kasparov, and in 2016, Google DeepMind's AlphaGo beat Go world champion Lee Sedol. In February, Altman said that by the end of the year, OpenAI could surpass humans in coding competitions. AI is already writing big chunks of code at Microsoft, Google, and Meta, the companies' CEOs have all said in recent months. Altman has said that demand for software engineers could eventually dip. "My basic assumption is that each software engineer will just do much, much more for a while. And then at some point, yeah, maybe we do need less software engineers," he said in March, referring to OpenAI's hiring strategy.
