The first edition of the International Olympiad of Artificial Intelligence (IOAI) for secondary school students took place in Burgas (Bulgaria) from 9 to 15 August this year. It was founded by Bulgarian LERAI Foundation of researchers and practitioners and was supervised by the International Scientific Committee of leading AI specialists from various universities. Its partners were i.a. Google, Team-GPT, University of Houston and University of Oxford. It was attended by 160 contestants from 30 countries, who were grouped into 40 teams and competing in two rounds, scientific and practical, highlighting various AI fields, such as Machine Learning (ML), Natural Language Processing (NLP) and Computer Vision (CV).
Poland was represented by two teams Poland-South and Poland-North, 4 persons each, composed of students of secondary general education schools in Wrocław, Rzeszów, Warszawa, Gdynia and Poznań. They were selected through the national AI Olympiad organised by Jagiellonian University, Adam Mickiewicz University, the University of Warsaw and the University of Wrocław and co-ordinated by Wrocław Mathematicians Foundation.
In each IOAI Round 21 teams were awarded medals. In the Scientific Round Poland-South won 2nd place and gold medal and Poland-North won 13th place and bronze medal. Poland-South also won 2nd place and gold medal in the Practical Round and was honoured by the organisers with a special award as one of three best teams of the Olympiad. Poland’s overall results were better than American and Chinese.
IOAI is the world youngest international Olympiad for secondary school students. The second edition will take place in Beijing, China, in the summer of 2025. It is noteworthy that in September 2024 young Poles achieved equally spectacular success at the individual International AI Olympiad accompanying Global AI Summit organised by Saudi Data & AI Authority (SDAIA) in Riyadh, the capital of Saudi Arabia. Out of 90 competitors from 22 countries students from Polish universities won one gold and silver medals.
