Przemysław “Psyho” Dębiak, a 42-year-old programmer from Poland, has made history by defeating OpenAI’s custom AI model at the AtCoder World Tour Finals (AWTF) 2025. The contest, considered one of the most prestigious coding tournaments in the world, invited 12 top-ranked human programmers and an AI competitor to tackle its challenging problems.
Dębiak edged out the AI model, branded OpenAIAHC, by a margin of 9.5% after a 10-hour coding marathon. The Polish programmer’s innovative approach, which involved using problem-solving shortcuts and educated guesses, secured his win despite the AI’s raw optimization capabilities.
The contest, which tasked competitors with plotting a robot’s path across a 30×30 grid using the fewest possible moves, is regarded as an ultimate stage for heuristic programming contests. This year’s challenge pushed human ingenuity to outthink the speed and precision of AI models, qualities where humans excel in complex, unsolvable problems.
Dębiak, a former OpenAI engineer, used Visual Studio Code with basic autocomplete to compete. He praised the AI model, saying it “pushed me to give everything,” but his unique approach ultimately secured his victory. The 500,000 yen prize for winning the contest carries symbolic weight, as humans triumph over AI in a field where machines typically excel.
While AI’s progress is undeniable, this win highlights human strengths such as creativity, endurance, and intuition – especially in long-form heuristic challenges. Dębiak acknowledged that AI may outperform humans in other areas, but his win proves the value of human ingenuity and adaptability in specific contexts.
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Source: https://www.tomshardware.com/tech-industry/artificial-intelligence/polish-programmer-beats-openais-custom-ai-in-10-hour-marathon-wins-world-coding-championship-possibly-the-last-human-winner