Bangladesh AI Team Secures Silver and Bronze Medals
This year, Bangladesh was invited for the first time to participate in the inaugural 'International Artificial Intelligence Olympiad' and secure medals.
Bangladesh has a long history of sending teams to various international Olympiads in subjects such as Mathematics, Physics, and Chemistry. To prepare for this global event, the Bangladesh Open Source Network (BDOSN) organised the 'Bangladesh Artificial Intelligence Olympiad'. The national event was held on May 8, 2024, at the Institute of Information Technology, Dhaka University. 45 students selected from over 150 high school and college participants competed in an online preliminary round here.
The top 10 students from the national event attended a four-day National Team Selection Camp starting on May 22, 2024, where they received training on artificial intelligence, ranging from basic to advanced levels. From this camp, four students were chosen to represent Bangladesh at the 'International Artificial Intelligence Olympiad 2024'.
The first session of the International Olympiad took place in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia, on September 8, 2024. The event concluded on September 12 with the closing ceremony and prize distribution. Bangladesh excelled in the competition, winning two silver and two bronze medals.
The competition had two segments: a scientific round and a practical round. The scientific round tested participants' theoretical knowledge of AI mathematics through a written exam, where Team Bangladesh performed reasonably well. They truly excelled in the practical round, which involved building live AI models and testing their accuracy in a programming contest.
A real-time leaderboard tracked progress based on 30% of the testing data. Notably, Bangladesh's Misbah Uddin Inan led the contest for two hours during the five-hour event. After further evaluations using the remaining 70% of the test data, the final rankings were Misbah Uddin Inan (18th), Arefin Anwar (24th), Abrar Shahid (43rd), and Rafid Ahmed (64th).
The competition awarded 84 points in total, with 42 points for each round. Students excelling in both rounds received medals.
Arefin Anwar from St. Joseph's College and Misbah Uddin Inan from Notre Dame College secured the silver medals, while Rafid Ahmed from Academia (Lalmatia) and Abrar Shahid, also from Notre Dame College, earned bronze. The competition involved both scientific and practical phases, which were held on September 9 and 11, with awards given based on the combined results of these phases.