Sber is accepting entries for international children’s contest AI Challenge

The first qualifying stage of the international children’s artificial intelligence competition for youth AI Challenge has started. It is co-organized by the Alliance in the field of artificial intelligence.

Participants from Russia and other countries will be able to immerse themselves in the world of science and technology, gain new knowledge, and develop skills in the field of artificial intelligence. Competition tasks are real challenges that technology businesses face today. They were developed by Sber teams and partners, as well as AI Alliance members. The competition is interesting both for those who are familiar with artificial intelligence and for those who are taking their first steps and are just getting acquainted with the technology.

The competition has four stages: qualifying, main, semi-final and final. Registration for the qualifying stage will last until September 15^th. During qualification contestants will need to individually solve problems to increase their personal rating.

This year, new practice will be available for children under 13 years old (inclusive): they can choose an individual track “Beginners” and compete with other beginners in developing solutions for partner companies of the competition. In addition, they will have the opportunity to join the “Explorers” team track for competitors under 17 years of age (inclusive). In it, participants will have to develop solutions for cases from companies with increased complexity.

The 18 winning teams of the “Researchers” category will share a prize fund of 14 million rubles (over $150,000) in the finals. The prize fund for all individual tracks, including another new track “Creative”, will be 3 million rubles (over $30,000), and participants will also receive additional opportunities for development.

Alexander Vedyakhin, first deputy chairman of the Executive Board, Sberbank:

“The future development of generative artificial intelligence models lies in the combination of design and engineering generation. Therefore, in this year’s competition for participants under 17 years old, we have developed an individual track “Creative”, where one needs to solve tasks using AI services such as GigaChat and Kandinsky. Our competition will help children learn how to generate creative original content and shape digital culture trends.

For example, last year the winners created a VR museum space, a weed recognition service and a model for diagnosing cardiac pathologies — these are just a few examples of innovative solutions. The most popular area for work among the participating teams was “Production”. It required developing an algorithm for analyzing information on ordered materials aimed at the prevention of delivery disruptions. In total, more than 1,200 solutions were uploaded in this area. And the youngest finalists of the competition were only 11 years old.

I wish all participants of the new competition good luck in creating unconventional technological projects!”

In order for the children to successfully pass the tests and gain new knowledge and skills, the organizers have provided many educational programs of different formats: collections of materials on artificial intelligence and seminars with experts.

During the entire period of the AI Challenge, more than 36 thousand children took part in the competition and worked on innovative Data Science solutions.

According to a member of the “Minions” team (Vladivostok, St. Petersburg), who won in the “Medicine” category in 2023, he turned to programming in high school. He wanted to try his hand at creating graphical applications and developing games in the cross-platform Unity environment. In the future, he wants to work in information security and create solutions at the intersection of web application security analysis and artificial intelligence technologies. Sber’s artificial intelligence laboratory supervised the “Medicine” track, in which teams were to build an ML model for the early diagnosis of diseases of the cardiovascular system.

A member of the “Backward-backward algorithm” team (St. Petersburg, Moscow) got interested in programming after watching a cartoon and became passionate about robotics. Now he participates in all hackathons and artificial intelligence competitions and collects prizes. He shared an example of the use of technology in his city: “My school and some universities in St. Petersburg are actively developing artificial environments for growing plants, and work is also underway to introduce AI technologies to create full-cycle systems.” The team took third place in the “Video Analysis and Image” category from VK.

In 2023, international children’s artificial intelligence competition for youth AI Challenge saw participants from 47 countries, including Armenia, Bangladesh, Belarus, India, Kazakhstan, China, the UAE and Uzbekistan. During the event, 251 teams were formed and more than 2,300 solutions were developed.