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DeepMind and OpenAI win gold at ICPC

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Re: DeepMind and OpenAI win gold at ICPC

#151
post #59

I've contemplated this a bit, and I think I have a bit of an unconventional take: First, this is really impressive. Second, with that out of the way, these models are not playing the same game as the human contestants, in at least two major regards. First, and quite obviously, they have massive amounts of compute power, which is kind of like giving a human team a week instead of five hours. But the models that are co…

> whereas the teams are allowed to bring a 25-page PDF

This is where I see the biggest issue. LLMs are first-and-foremost text compression algorithms. They have a compressed version of a very good chunk of human writing.

After being text compression engines, LLMs are really good at interpolating text based on the generalization induced by the lossy compression.

What this result really tells us is that, given a reasonably well compressed corpus of human knowledge, the ICPC can be view as an interpolation task.

Re: DeepMind and OpenAI win gold at ICPC

#152

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Humans are allowed to look up and learn from as many previous problems as they want before the competition. The AI is also trained on many previous problems before the competition. What's the difference?

Deleted, because the "AI" geniuses and power users pointed out that Tao does not have a point. You can get this one to -4 as well, since that seems to be the primary pleasure for "AI" one armed bandit users.

It doesn't say anywhere that Gemini used any of those things at ICPC, or that it used more real-world time than the humans.

Also, who cares? It's a self contained non-human system that could solve an ICPC problem it hasn't seen before on its own, which hasn't been achieved before.

If there was a savant human contestant with photographic memory who could remember every previous ICPC problem verbatim and can think really fast you wouldn't say they're cheating, just that they're really smart. Same here.

If there was a man behind the curtain that was somehow making this not an AI achievement then you would have a point, but there isn't.

Re: DeepMind and OpenAI win gold at ICPC

#153
post #59

I've contemplated this a bit, and I think I have a bit of an unconventional take: First, this is really impressive. Second, with that out of the way, these models are not playing the same game as the human contestants, in at least two major regards. First, and quite obviously, they have massive amounts of compute power, which is kind of like giving a human team a week instead of five hours. But the models that are co…

Firstly, automobiles are really impressive. Second, with that out the way, these cars are not playing the same game as horses… first, and quite obviously they have massive amounts of horsepower, which is kind of like giving a team of horses… many more horses. But also cars have an absolutely massive fuel capacity. Petrol is such an efficient store of chemical energy compared to hay and cars can store gallons of it. I…

Yeah man, and it would be wild to publish an article titled "Ford Mustang and Honda Civic win gold in the 100 meter dash at the Olympics" if what happened was the companies drove their cars 100 meters and tweeted that they did it faster than the Olympians had run.

Actually that's too generous, because the humans are given a time limit in ICPC, and there's no clear mapping to say how the LLM's compute should be limited to make a comparison.

It IS an interesting result to see how models can do on these tests - and it's also a garbage headline.

Re: DeepMind and OpenAI win gold at ICPC

#154

I went to ICPC's web pages, downloaded the first problem (problem A) and gave it to GPT-5, asking it for code to solve it (stating it was a problem from a recent competitive programming contest). It thought for 7m 53s and gave as reply # placeholder # (No solution provided)

1. What was your prompt? 2. Why did you give it to GPT-5 instead of GPT-5 Thinking or GPT-5 Pro?

Re: DeepMind and OpenAI win gold at ICPC

#155
post #115

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Firstly, automobiles are really impressive. Second, with that out the way, these cars are not playing the same game as horses Yes. That’s why cars don’t compete in equestrian events and horses don’t go to F1 races. This non-controversial surely? You want different events for humans, humans + computers, and just computers. Notice that self driving cars have separate race events from both horses and human-driven cars…

I think you missed that the whole point of this race was: "did we build a vehicle faster than a horse, yes/no?" Which matters a lot when horses are the fastest land vehicle available. (We're so used to thinking of horses as a quaint and slow mean of transport that maybe we don't realize that for millennia they've been the fastest possible way to get from one place to another.)

> "did we build a vehicle faster than a horse, yes/no?"

Yeah fair. There's also that famous human vs horse race that happens every few years. So far humans keep winning (because it's long distance)

Re: DeepMind and OpenAI win gold at ICPC

#156
post #115

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Firstly, automobiles are really impressive. Second, with that out the way, these cars are not playing the same game as horses… first, and quite obviously they have massive amounts of horsepower, which is kind of like giving a team of horses… many more horses. But also cars have an absolutely massive fuel capacity. Petrol is such an efficient store of chemical energy compared to hay and cars can store gallons of it. I…

> Firstly, automobiles are really impressive. Second, with that out the way, these cars are not playing the same game as horses Yes. That’s why cars don’t compete in equestrian events and horses don’t go to F1 races. This non-controversial surely? You want different events for humans, humans + computers, and just computers. Notice that self driving cars have separate race events from both horses and human-driven cars…

The point is that up until now, humans were the best at these competitions, just like horses were the best at racing up until cars came around.

The other commenter is pointing out how ridiculous it would be for someone to downplay the performance of cars because they did it differently from horses. It doesn't matter if they did it using different methods, that fact that the final outcome was better had world-changing ramifications.

The same applies here. Downplaying AI because it has different strengths or plays by different rules is foolish, because that doesn't matter in the real world. People will choose the option that that leads to the better/faster/cheaper outcome, and that option is quickly becoming AI instead of humans - just like cars quickly became the preferred option over horses. And that is crazy to think about.

Re: DeepMind and OpenAI win gold at ICPC

#157

I went to ICPC's web pages, downloaded the first problem (problem A) and gave it to GPT-5, asking it for code to solve it (stating it was a problem from a recent competitive programming contest). It thought for 7m 53s and gave as reply # placeholder # (No solution provided)

1. What was your prompt? 2. Why did you give it to GPT-5 instead of GPT-5 Thinking or GPT-5 Pro?

Here is the prompt I just gave to GPT-5 Pro - its chugging on it. Not sure if it will succeed. Let's see what happens. I did think about converting the PDF to markdown, but figured this prompt is more fair.

-

You are a gold level math olympiad competitor participating in the ICPC 2025 Baku competition. You will be given a competitive programming problem to solve completely.

All problems are located at the following URL: https://worldfinals.icpc.global/problems/2025/finals/problem...

Here is the problem you need to solve and only solve this problem:

Problem B located on Page 3 of the PDF that starts with this text - but has other text so ensure you go to the PDF and look at all of page 3

To help her elementary school students understand the concept of prime factorization, Aisha has invented a game for them to play on the blackboard. The rules of the game are as follows.

The game is played by two players who alternate their moves. Initially, the integers from 1 to n are written on the blackboard. To start, the first player may choose any even number and circle it. On every subsequent move, the current player must choose a number that is either the circled number multiplied by some prime, or the circled number divided by some prime. That player then erases the circled number and circles the newly chosen number. When a player is unable to make a move, that player loses the game.

To help Aisha’s students, write a program that, given the integer n, decides whether it is better to move first or second, and if it is better to move first, figures out a winning first move.

Your task is to provide a complete solution that includes: 1. A thorough analysis and solution approach 2. Working code implementation 3. Unit test cases with random inputs 4. Performance optimization to run within 1 second

Use your scratchpad to think through the problem systematically before providing your final solution.

Think through the following steps:

1. Problem Understanding: - What exactly is the problem asking for? - What are the input constraints and output requirements? - Are there any edge cases to consider?

2. Solution Strategy: - What algorithm or mathematical approach should be used? - What is the time complexity of your approach? - What is the space complexity? - Will this approach work within the given constraints?

3. Implementation Planning: - What data structures will you need? - How will you handle input/output? - What are the key functions or components?

4. Testing Strategy: - What types of test cases should you create? - How will you generate random inputs within the problem constraints? - What edge cases need specific testing?

5. Optimization Considerations: - Are there any bottlenecks in your initial approach? - Can you reduce time or space complexity? - Are there language-specific optimizations to apply?

Now provide your complete solution with the following components:

Provide a detailed analysis of the problem, including: - Problem interpretation and requirements - Chosen algorithm/approach and why - Time and space complexity analysis - Key insights or mathematical observations

Provide your complete, working code solution. Make sure it: - Handles all input/output correctly - Implements your chosen algorithm efficiently - Includes proper error handling if needed - Is well-commented for clarity

Create comprehensive unit test cases that: - Test normal cases with random inputs within constraints - Test edge cases (minimum/maximum values, boundary conditions) - Include at least 5-10 different test scenarios - Show expected outputs for each test case

Explain any optimizations you made or could make: - Performance improvements implemented - Memory usage optimizations - Language-specific optimizations - Verification that solution runs within 1 second for maximum constraints

Take all the time you need to solve this problem thoroughly and correctly.

Re: DeepMind and OpenAI win gold at ICPC

#158
post #62

So this year SotA models have gotten gold at IMO, IoI, ICPC and beat 9/10 humans in that atcoder thing that tested optimisation problems. Yet the most reposted headlines and rethoric is "wall this", "stangation that", "model regression", "winter", "bubble", doom etc.

My response simply is that performance in coding competitions such as ICPC is a very different skillset than what is required in a regular software engineering job. GPT-5 still cannot make sense of my company's legacy codebase even if asked to do the most basic tasks that a new grad out of college can figure out in a day or two. I recently asked it to fix a broken test (I had messed with it by changing one single ass…

This. Dealing with the problems of a real-world legacy code base is the exact opposite of a perfectly constrained problem, verified for internal consistency probably by computers and humans, of all things, and presented neatly in a single PDF. There are dozens, if not 100s, of assumptions that humans are going to make while solving a problem (i.e., make sure you don't crash the website on your first day at work!) that an LLM is not going to. Similar to why, despite all its hype, Waymo cars are still being supervised by human drivers nearly 100% of the time and can't even park themselves regularly without stalling with no explanation.

Re: DeepMind and OpenAI win gold at ICPC

#159

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Firstly, automobiles are really impressive. Second, with that out the way, these cars are not playing the same game as horses… first, and quite obviously they have massive amounts of horsepower, which is kind of like giving a team of horses… many more horses. But also cars have an absolutely massive fuel capacity. Petrol is such an efficient store of chemical energy compared to hay and cars can store gallons of it. I…

Yeah man, and it would be wild to publish an article titled "Ford Mustang and Honda Civic win gold in the 100 meter dash at the Olympics" if what happened was the companies drove their cars 100 meters and tweeted that they did it faster than the Olympians had run. Actually that's too generous, because the humans are given a time limit in ICPC, and there's no clear mapping to say how the LLM's compute should be limite…

I think your analogy is interesting but it falls apart because “moving fast” is not something we consider uniquely human, but “solving hard abstract problems” is

Re: DeepMind and OpenAI win gold at ICPC

#160

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yeah man, and it would be wild to publish an article titled "Ford Mustang and Honda Civic win gold in the 100 meter dash at the Olympics" if what happened was the companies drove their cars 100 meters and tweeted that they did it faster than the Olympians had run. Actually that's too generous, because the humans are given a time limit in ICPC, and there's no clear mapping to say how the LLM's compute should be limite…

I think your analogy is interesting but it falls apart because “moving fast” is not something we consider uniquely human, but “solving hard abstract problems” is

Not my analogy, parent is the one who brought up automobiles. Maybe that's who you meant to reply to.

I'm talking about the headline saying they "won gold" at a competition they didn't, and couldn't, compete in.

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