Sber announced the results of AIJ Contest, where the winners were determined

Sber announced the winners of AIJ Contest 2023, an international artificial intelligence (AI) competition held jointly with the AIRI Artificial Intelligence Institute. The prize fund of the competition amounted to a record 11.5 million rubles. More than 1,300 data scientists from 20 countries, including Russia, India, Indonesia, Kazakhstan and others, participated in the competition. The total number of uploaded solutions amounted to more than 12 thousand, which is twice as many as in the previous year.

The AI Journey Contest 2023 focused on the idea that artificial intelligence provides unique opportunities for each individual. The five challenges of the contest together formed the SUPER concept: Strength, Unique, Personalization, Equal, and Rescue.

This year's competition attracted a record number of participants and received many innovative solutions. What is particularly impressive is not only their number, but also the high quality of the proposed solutions. The participants proposed non-standard approaches to complex tasks that present serious challenges. Alexander Vedyakhin, First Deputy Chairman of Sber, expressed his gratitude to all participants for their professionalism and out-of-the-box thinking, which make a significant contribution to the development of artificial intelligence for the benefit of society.

A group of researchers from Innopolis University and MIPT consisting of Mikhail Rudakov, Alexander Beznosikov, Yaroslav Kholodov, and Alexander Gasnikov received a cash prize of one million rubles for their research paper "Layer and Gradient Activation Compression Techniques for Distributed Learning of Artificial Intelligence Models". This article was recognized as the best in the collection of the international conference AI Journey 2023.

In total, more than 270 submissions were received from different countries as part of the selection of papers on Strong Artificial Intelligence (AGI), Large Language Models (LLM), Computer Vision (CV), Reinforcement Learning (RL), Natural Language Processing (NLP), Generative Adversarial Networks (GAN), Graphs, Transformers, Sustainable AI, reducing the carbon footprint of AI model training (Green AI), AI for Good, medicine and other sectors. An expert committee consisting of recognized specialists and leading industry experts selected 38 papers to be published in a special issue of the scientific journal "Reports of the Russian Academy of Sciences. Mathematics, Informatics, Control Processes".

"This is the eighth time Sber has organized an AI conference. Last year we established a significant cash prize for the best scientific publication within the AI Journey research track, and this year we are giving it away for the first time. This is one of our initiatives to promote artificial intelligence and machine learning in our country. The expert committee selected the best article based on its high scientific value and significance for fundamental and applied research. I congratulate the winners and hope that they will continue their research in this important direction," Vedyakhin noted.