More and more intellectual fields are falling to the rapid onslaught of AI.
After Google had officially delivered a gold medal performance at the International Mathematics Olympiad, the company has now delivered a gold medal performance at the International Collegiate Programming Contest. Google was represented by an advanced version of its Deep Think model. The ICPC is globally recognized as the oldest, largest and most prestigious algorithmic programming competition at college level.
The competition this year was held in Baku, Azerbaijan. Participants from nearly 3000 universities and over 103 countries competed in solving real-world coding problems. Over a five-hour period, each team tackled a set of complex algorithmic problems. Perfect solutions earned points, and every minute was counted. From the 139 competing teams, only the top four teams won gold medals.
Google’s model had participated remotely under ICPC rules. It had started 10 minutes after the human participants, and was able to correctly solve 10 of the 12 problems. “Gemini solved eight problems within just 45 minutes and two more problems within three hours, using a wide variety of advanced data structures and algorithms to generate its solutions. By solving 10 problems in a combined total time of 677 minutes, Gemini 2.5 Deep Think would be ranked in 2nd place overall, if compared with the university teams in the competition,” Google said in a post.
“The ICPC has always been about setting the highest standards in problem solving,” said Dr. Bill Poucher, ICPC Global Executive Director. “Gemini successfully joining this arena, and achieving gold-level results, marks a key moment in defining the AI tools and academic standards needed for the next generation. Congratulations to Google DeepMind; this work will help us fuel a digital renaissance for the benefit of all,” he added.
This is an impressive result, and is yet another example of how AI is now close to matching the best humans at coding. OpenAI’s o3 model was ranked 175 on Codeforces earlier this year, indicating that it was better than all but 174 human coders. In July, an OpenAI model had placed second behind a human coder at the AtCoder coding competition. And with Google now delivering a gold medal performance at a top coding competition, it does seem likely that it won’t be long before computers are decisively better than all humans at programming.