Przemysław Dębiak, who is also a former OpenAI employee, competing under the name “Psycho,” beat out the company's AI model on Wednesday during the AtCoder World Tour Finals 2025 Heuristic contest in Tokyo. The event was hosted by AtCoder, a prominent Japanese platform for competitive programming, and marked the first time an AI model faced human coders in a major onsite championship.
OpenAI was a sponsor for the event and entered an AI model into an exhibition match titled “Humans vs AI.” Contestants were tasked with solving a complex optimization problem over the course of 10 hours. Dębiak narrowly edged out the AI to claim first place.
Dębiak, who did not rely on AI tools during the event, said he used only Visual Studio Code and basic autocomplete to assist with repetitive tasks. Speaking to Business Insider, he described how he felt exhausted during the competition, even feeling the need to take a break, but he was motivated to keep pushing.
"I was very close to getting a score comparable to the model," he said, explaining that the challenge drove him to keep pushing despite being exhausted. "I'm trying to give 100% of what I have and try to stay alive."
After the victory, Dębiak posted on X, "Humanity has prevailed (for now!). I'm completely exhausted. I figured, I had 10h of sleep in the last 3 days and I'm barely alive.”
OpenAI CEO Sam Altman congratulated Dębiak, posting, “good job psyho."
OpenAI also acknowledged the result, posting, “Our model took 2nd place at the AtCoder Heuristics World Finals! Congrats to the champion for holding us off this time.”
