Children and teenagers from some 80 countries are taking part in the Artificial Intelligence International Junior Contest (AIIJC). Russia, India, Kyrgyzstan, Kazakhstan and Bangladesh account for the largest cohorts of participants, but the Philippines, Canada, Ecuador and a variety of other countries are also involved.
This first-of-its-kind competition is organized jointly by Sber, Russia’s state-controlled financial and digital giant, and the Artificial Intelligence Alliance, an association launched in 2019 by Russian digital, financial and oil majors.
The participants are forming their teams right now; until July 31 they will be choosing their contest domain and fighting to get into the final. These domains include driverless transport, inclusive environments, customer service, medicine, neuroscience, natural language processing, education, recruitment and robotics.
The teams are requested to solve problems based on real challenges from industry players. 2GIS, Citymobil, Rabota.ru, Sber and its multiple R&D units, are among the companies which shared their challenges, helping define the contest tasks.
Under plans, the best teams from each track will meet offline in Moscow for the final in late 2021. The winners will be rewarded with a 1 million ruble prize (around $14,000) in each category.
The contest is being held in the framework of the Year of Science and Technology in Russia.
In a separate initiative, Sber has held a hackathon to “determine priority tracks (frontiers) for science and technology” as part of the national competition Digital Breakthrough 2021. The participants developed AI-based solutions that would “enable the state and companies to set cutting-edge tasks for technological development, plan research, and allocate funding for the most promising areas.”
Source: Sber (1, 2)
