SPbU first year student wins international AI challenge

Participants competed in three tracks: the team track "Researchers" and the individual tracks "Beginners" and "Creative". The contestants were tasked with solving technological and business cases covering a wide range of economic sectors — from metallurgy and agriculture to investment and creativity. The solution developed by Alexander Astafurov, a first year student at St Petersburg University (Mathematics and Computer Science), and Andrey Khlopotnykh, a student at the 30th Lyceum of Physics and Mathematics, won first place in the "Large Language Model" category. 

The international AI Challenge for teenagers is organised by Sber in cooperation with the AI Alliance.

"We were asked to create a model architecture that could effectively generate and interpret text, extract the main idea from a given material and also formulate answers based on an image using information from a graph. In my opinion, working with the graph was the most challenging part, as this task is usually solved without it. This approach looks promising and has been tested for the first time," says Alexander Astafurov. This is not the first time Alexander has won the AI Challenge — in 2023, his work in the "Image and Video Analysis" category also received top marks from the judges. Alexander is confident that "the key to winning is to buckle up for productivity and focus on the project".

In addition to a cash prize, the young mathematicians were given the opportunity to participate in an educational programme developed by the AI Alliance in cooperation with Central University. Based on the results of the training, a Russian school team will participate in the International AI Olympiad in China.