From August 2 to 8, Astana will host the International Olympiad in Artificial Intelligence (IOAI), with 478 participants from 103 nations, including a team from Russia. For the first time, Yandex Contest has been selected as the primary platform for this competition, providing free access to its services. Participants will utilize the platform to receive tasks, communicate with judges, submit their solutions for evaluation, and check results. The competition consists of two rounds where students will tackle practical machine learning challenges, including developing computer vision systems and analyzing time series data.
Yandex Contest will serve as the testing system for both the individual competition and a separate team event for countries beginning to explore AI technologies. The platform is designed to handle the unique verification scenarios required for machine learning competitions, allowing participants to submit not only final answers but also their entire workflow, including source code and intermediate calculations. Evaluation will occur in two phases, with initial checks against a public validation dataset and subsequent testing of top submissions on a private extended dataset to determine final rankings.
Yandex Contest has previously supported regional and final stages of the All-Russian Olympiad in Artificial Intelligence, with over 50,000 solutions evaluated last year. Alexey Gusakov, the technical director, emphasized Yandex's commitment to educational initiatives that prepare specialists for the IT industry, showcasing the platform's capabilities for global competitions like IOAI.