Computers have taken the crown in chess, Go and poker, but when it comes to competitive coding, humans still have the edge \u2013 just.<\/p>\n
Earlier this month Przemys\u0142aw D\u0119biak, a Polish coder and mind sports champion, narrowly clinched a victory over OpenAI\u2019s entrant in the AtCoder World Tour Finals 2025, in Tokyo. However, the elite coder, who goes by the online name Psyho, predicts he may be the last human to win the prestigious title due to the incredible pace of technological progress.<\/p>\n
\u201cThat\u2019s probable,\u201d said Psyho, 41, who previously worked at OpenAI before retiring five years ago. \u201cI would prefer not, mostly because I like these competitions and knowing there\u2019s this magical entity that can do it better than me would be a little bit frustrating.\u201d<\/p>\n
There is an irony, Psyho acknowledged, that coders have contributed to their own professional demise.<\/p>\n
\u201cBefore the contest, I tweeted \u2018Live by the sword, die by the sword\u2019,\u201d he said. \u201cI helped developing AI and I would be the one who would be the loser of the match. Although I won, in the end, for now.\u201d<\/p>\n
Polish programmer Przemys\u0142aw D\u0119biak, known as Psyho. Photograph: Courtesy of Przemys\u0142aw D\u0119biak<\/p>\n
The AtCoder euristic division included 11 human participants (invited on the basis of world rankings) and a coding algorithm designed by OpenAI, which finished in second place, 9.5% behind Psyho\u2019s winning score. Sam Altman, OpenAI\u2019s CEO, tweeted his congratulations.<\/p>\n
The 10-hour contest involves solving a complex optimisation problem. A classic in the genre is the \u201ctravelling salesman problem\u201d, where the salesman needs to figure out the shortest possible route between multiple cities, each visited once. Typically, these problems are simple to state, but finding an optimal solution is computationally very complex. And so, while ChatGPT is now routinely used to write boilerplate code, the AI\u2019s performance on an open-ended logic problem will be viewed as impressive.<\/p>\n
\u201cAt the current state, humans \u2013 top humans, to be clear \u2013 are still much better at reasoning and solving complex problems,\u201d said Psyho. But humans are \u201cbottlenecked\u201d by how quickly they can type code, while an AI can try out lots of small adjustments very rapidly.<\/p>\n
\u201cThe model is like cloning a single human multiple times and working in parallel,\u201d he said. \u201cAI might not be the smartest right now but it\u2019s definitely the fastest. And sometimes multiplying a single average person many many times produces a better result than a single, special human being.\u201d<\/p>\n
The result comes as major tech companies, including Meta and Microsoft<\/a>, are turning to AI to write software code. Dario Amodei, the Anthropic CEO, warned in May that AI could take 20%<\/a> of white-collar jobs in the next one to five years.<\/p>\n \u201cEvery profession has this right now, more or less,\u201d said Psyho. \u201cSome people have it coming right now \u2013 all of the white collar jobs. For manual jobs, robotics is lagging by several years.\u201d<\/p>\n Like many in the industry, Psyho is ambivalent about the potential impact of ever more powerful AI models. \u201cWe have a tonne of issues,\u201d he said. \u201cDisinformation, social impact, humans not having a purpose in life. Historically society moves at a very slow pace. Technological progress right now is moving at a faster and faster and faster pace.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Computers have taken the crown in chess, Go and poker, but when it comes to competitive coding, humans…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":293313,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3163],"tags":[323,1942,53,16,15],"class_list":{"0":"post-293312","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-artificial-intelligence","8":"tag-ai","9":"tag-artificial-intelligence","10":"tag-technology","11":"tag-uk","12":"tag-united-kingdom"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@uk\/114919613565953878","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/293312","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=293312"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/293312\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/293313"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=293312"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=293312"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=293312"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}