Polish programmer beats AI in prestigious coding contest

Przemysław Dębiak, known as Psycho, a programmer from Gdynia in northern Poland, has won a prestigious coding competition by defeating 11 opponents - including a specially designed artificial intelligence model developed by OpenAI.

Pixabay License

Image by Gerd Altmann from Pixabay

His impressive victory was personally acknowledged by OpenAI CEO Sam Altman.

“Humanity has prevailed (for now!) I'm completely exhausted. I figured I had 10 hours of sleep in the last three 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),” the Polish programmer wrote on his profile on X (formerly Twitter).

“Good job Psycho,” Sam Altman responded, congratulating him on his win at the AtCoder World Tour Finals 2025 Heuristic Contest in Tokyo.

good job psyho https://t.co/CDPUOaF9qn

— Sam Altman (@sama) July 16, 2025

As OpenAI explains, the AtCoder Heuristics World Finals is a global programming competition centered on optimization challenges - problems that require not just finding a solution, but striving for the most effective one.

The contest is designed to test participants' creativity, strategic thinking, and endurance under intense time and resource pressure.

The AtCoder Heuristics World Finals is a global programming competition focused on optimization problems: tasks where you don't just solve a problem but actively search for the best possible solution.

It tests creativity, strategy, and persistence under strict time and resource…

— OpenAI (@OpenAI) July 17, 2025

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Source: X/@sama/@OpenAI