The Russian national school team became the absolute champion at the International AI Olympiad

For the third year in a row, the Russian school team became the absolute champion at the International Olympiad on Artificial Intelligence (IOAI), which was held in Bulgaria from August 2 to 7.

The Russian team won eight medals — seven gold (Artem Gorokhov, Mikhail Vershinin, Yelisey Kirpichenko, Kirill Labzin, Alexander Povarov, Nikita Pudovkin and Semyon Rodionov) and one bronze (Alexey Kolegov). Thus, the Russian national team became the absolute leader of the competition, ahead of the teams from China and Poland, who took second and third places, respectively.

Gorokhov also became the absolute winner of the individual competition. The national team has been holding the champion status every year since the Olympic Games were founded, which was held for the third time this year. The team was trained by experts from the Central University and the Alliance in the field of artificial intelligence.

In the final, the Russians competed with 465 schoolchildren from 105 countries, including the USA, China, Great Britain and the Netherlands. The number of participants this year has increased by 64% compared to last year, which has become a record for the entire existence of the tournament. In terms of the number of participants, IOAI took the second place in the world ranking of Olympiads, second only to the International Mathematical Olympiad.

The final of the competition consisted of two individual rounds, each lasting six hours. On the first day, students solved audio tasks, robot control, and semantic word search. The second round included the implementation of adversarial attacks on computer vision models, the development of algorithms for detecting texts created by neural networks, and the generation of various variations of the Olympiad logo.

Medals in the national team were awarded to the winners and prize-winners of the All-Russian AI Olympiad, the Asia-Pacific Olympiad on Artificial Intelligence and the international AI Challenge competition.

Russian Deputy Prime Minister Alexander Chernyshenko congratulated the Russian team on their victory, outstanding performance and brilliant triumph. According to him, the national team has once again shown its skills at the international level.

"Today, artificial intelligence has become a reliable human assistant, and it is talents such as Olympic winners and prize—winners who will have to move technology forward. For its part, the government will continue to create conditions for the implementation of youth in this area through the measures of the national projects "Youth and Children" and "Data Economy and Digital Transformation of the state," Chernyshenko stressed.

Sergey Kravtsov, Minister of Education of the Russian Federation, in turn, noted that it is in such a dense and fair competition as at this Olympiad that talents are revealed, since it is not enough to know only theory here — you need to think quickly, find non-standard solutions and not be afraid of difficult tasks.

"The ability to work with AI is becoming a necessary skill today. It's about critical thinking, which makes a person stronger than any technology. These are the skills you demonstrate at the Olympics, and they will be your main advantage in the future — in science, engineering, and any profession where you need to create new things," the minister added.

On July 2, the Russian national team became the absolute champion of the International Cybersecurity Olympiad among High School students. The national team won four medals, and one of its participants became the absolute winner of the Olympics in the individual competition. Experts from the Central University and Kaspersky Lab have traditionally been involved in the preparation of the national team.