December 20, 2024, Moscow: The AI Journey international conference on artificial intelligence and machine learning hosted an awards ceremony for the winners of the AI Challenge, an international AI competition for children organized by Sberbank and AI Alliance Russia. 18 teams from the Researchers track and 26 participants from the Beginners and Creators individual tracks were judged as the best and shared the RUB 17 mn prize fund (over $160,000).
This year, 8,500 children from 65 countries, including the USA, Ukraine, Uzbekistan, Ethiopia, Peru, India, Canada, participated in the competition. India became second in the number of registered participants of the AI Challenge. Participants from other BRICS countries–Ethiopia, Egypt, and South Africa–also showed great interest in the contest. Students from the CIS countries also took part in the competition: the top five CIS countries in terms of the number of registered participants were Russia, Kazakhstan, Uzbekistan, Belarus, and Kyrgyzstan. The children worked on technological business cases in 16 areas, spanning metallurgy, agriculture, investment, creative industries, and many more. The AI Challenge winners were from Russia, Kazakhstan, and Canada.
Alexander Vedyakhin, first deputy chairman of the Executive Board, Sberbank:
“The AI Challenge contest is designed to help kids improve their AI skills and make their first contribution to the development of technology for the benefit of humanity. This year, participants competed in three categories of varying complexity. Everyone, regardless of their level of knowledge and skill in the field, was able to prove themselves by working on business challenges using AI solutions. In partnership with AI Alliance Russia and leading Russian universities, we are creating new opportunities to train world-class, talented young professionals in Russia.”
The youngest AI Challenge winner, Oleg Zamkov from Moscow, is 10 years old.
Oleg Zamkov, Beginners track, 2nd place:
“I am a technology enthusiast, and I was fascinated by the contest’s themes. It was the first time I participated in such a contest, and I didn’t think I would win because the tasks were quite difficult. I was very happy when I found out that I had won. I enjoyed competing with other kids. I learned how artificial intelligence works, and I was able to put that knowledge into practice while doing the contest tasks.”
The winners of the Al Challenge noted that it was fun and challenging to work on technological business cases. With AI Challenge, boys and girls have become more confident in their abilities, fostered their AI and teamwork skills, and are now ready for even more challenging competitions.
Ivan Fenster, Team 42, Researchers track:
“It was challenging but fun. The competition helped me improve my skills in at-work interactions and team organization along with AI and programming skills. I felt that I was able to organize the team so that we could achieve meaningful results. I hope to use these skills in other competitions and projects. I think that, in the future, AI will become a very useful tool in all areas of our lives. AI is already being implemented in many processes around the world, and it is important to understand how and what exactly is happening. Besides, it’s cool to be on the crest of this wave.”
The winners of the Researchers track, in addition to the cash prize, will have the opportunity to undergo a unique educational program by AI Alliance Russia and Central University. As a result, a Russian school team will be formed to participate in the International Olympiad in Artificial Intelligence (IOAI), which will be held in China on August 2–10, 2025.
AI Challenge winners will also receive a number of benefits, including scholarships from leading Russian universities that are academic partners of the competition: Innopolis University, Central University, and ITMO University.
Contest tasks for this year’s AI Challenge were developed by Sber, its partners, and AI Alliance companies, including T-Bank, Severstal, Samolyot, Rusagro, VK, National Medical Research Center for Therapy and Preventive Medicine, SberEducation, Algorithmika, and other companies.
This year, AI Challenge 2023 winners Makar Baderko and Semyon Epanov also participated in the case preparation. Together with SberInvestments, they prepared a task for the Researchers team track. The challenge was to build a time series model to validate MOEX (Moscow Exchange) data, taking into account investment news, in order to predict the movement of prices over a one-hour period.