Human Programmer Narrowly Beats OpenAI Model in Coding World Championship

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.

'Humanity has prevailed (for now!)' says former OpenAI employee, admitting he's 'barely alive' after beating one of its AI models in a coding world championship fight

While it might seem like AI models are rapidly overtaking the endeavours of squishy human beings, it appears some hope of staying ahead of our AI overlords may remain. And in this case, that hope is personified by Przemysław Dębiak, a former OpenAI employee who has narrowly beaten one of the company's models in a coding world championship. Dębiak was competing in the AtCoder World Tour Finals 2025 Heuristic contest in Tokyo last week, pitting his coding skills against not only multiple human competitors, but OpenAI's "OpenAIAHC", a custom simulated reasoning model similar to OpenAI o3 (via Ars Technica). The competition involved contestants solving a complex optimisation problem over a 10-hour period, before being scored on their achievements. The participants were allowed to solve the problem using any programming language available at AtCoder, although they were limited to identical hardware and a mandatory five-minute wait between coding submissions. Dębiak, competing under the name "Psyho", earned a final score of 1,812,272,588,909, placing him top of the leaderboard and trouncing the AI, which scored 1,654,675,725,406, earning it a second-place finish. Taking to X to celebrate his achievement, Dębiak proudly announced, "Humanity has prevailed (for now!)", but admitted the competition had taken its toll: "I'm completely exhausted. I figured, I had 10 [hours] of sleep in the last three days and I'm barely alive." OpenAI, however, seems quite happy with its model's silver-medal achievement. Speaking to Ars Technica, a company spokesperson said: "Models like o3 rank among the top 100 in coding/math contests, but as far as we know, this is the first top-three placement in a premier coding/math contest. Events like AtCoder give us a way to test how well our models can reason strategically, plan over long time horizons, and improve solutions through trial and error -- just like a human would." Officially, OpenAI might be correct. However, it's worth noting that two Google DeepMind systems, AlphaProof and AlphaGeometry 2, earned themselves a silver-medal-equivalent score in one of the world's hardest maths competitions last year, although neither model officially entered into the competition itself. This particular competition is believed to be the first time an AI model has directly competed against human programmers in a coding contest, and while I don't want to knock Dębiak's achievement, it's pretty impressive that the machine came in second place. That probably doesn't bode well for the future of human coding competitors, as while programmers are inevitably improving their skills, the immense speed of AI development is likely to mean it won't be long before AI models are topping the leaderboards in similar competitions. For now, though, the champagne bottle and winner's laurels are firmly in Dębiak's hands, although being a coding competition, it was probably an energy drink followed by an eventual lie-down. Chalk another one up for humanity, though -- we've still got it where it counts. Just about, I reckon.