It is widely expected that AI will outperform humans in a wide series of endeavors – a reality that is bound to impact our world in a myriad of ways.
When it comes to coding, it appears that the AI models are not quite there yet, as we learn that an exhausted Polish programmer beat ‘an advanced AI model from OpenAI’ in a 10-hour coding competition.
The outstanding coder’s feat may soon be impossible to replicate.
Ars Technica reported:
“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, [in] what may be the first contest where an AI model competed directly against top human programmers in a major onsite world championship.”
OpenAI participated as a sponsor and with an AI model in the special exhibition ‘Humans vs AI’. Their bot only achieved 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’.”
Humanity has prevailed (for now!)
I’m completely exhausted. I figured, I had 10h of sleep in the last 3 days and I’m barely alive.
I’ll post more about the contest when I get some rest.
(To be clear, those are provisional results, but my lead should be big enough) pic.twitter.com/fIMo0ifNCd
— Psyho (@FakePsyho) July 16, 2025
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 pic.twitter.com/RsLD8lECNq
— Psyho (@FakePsyho) July 17, 2025
“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.”
good job psyho https://t.co/CDPUOaF9qn
— Sam Altman (@sama) July 16, 2025
While Dębiak won 500,000 yen (a little over $3,000) in one of competitive programming’s most exclusive events, which invites only the top 12 programmers on the planet.
“OpenAI characterized the second-place finish as a milestone for AI models in competitive programming. “Models like o3 rank among the top-100 in coding/math contests, but as far as we know, this is the first top-3 placement in a premier coding/math contest,” a company spokesperson said in an email to Ars Technica.”
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