[ExI] Modern day John Henry

[Jason Resch]

I predicted, the last human job to be replaced (before all are permanently
threatened) will be the AI programmer's:

https://alwaysasking.com/when-will-ai-take-over/#What_Jobs_are_Safe

It looks like we're here.

Jason


On Thu, Jul 31, 2025, 7:05 PM Stuart LaForge via extropy-chat <
extropy-chat at lists.extropy.org> wrote:

> Recently a Polish programmer and former employee of OpenAI named
> Przemysław Dębiak (known as "Psyho"), narrowly defeated the custom AI
> model entered by his former employers in the AtCoder World Tour Finals
> 2025 Heuristic programming contest in Tokyo.
>
>
> https://arstechnica.com/ai/2025/07/exhausted-man-defeats-ai-model-in-world-coding-championship/
>
> ---------Excerpt---------
> "Humanity has prevailed (for now!)," wrote Dębiak on X, noting he had
> little sleep while competing in several competitions across three days.
> "I'm completely exhausted. ... I'm barely alive."
>
> The competition required contestants to solve a single complex
> optimization problem over 600 minutes. The contest echoes the American
> folk tale of John Henry, the steel-driving man who raced against a
> steam-powered drilling machine in the 1870s. Like Henry's legendary
> battle against industrial automation, Dębiak's victory represents a
> human expert pushing themselves to their physical limits to prove that
> human skill still matters in an age of advancing AI.
>
> Both stories feature exhausting endurance contests—Henry drove steel
> spikes for hours until his heart gave out, while Dębiak coded for 10
> hours on minimal sleep. The parallel extends to the bittersweet nature
> of both victories: Henry won his race but died from the effort,
> symbolizing the inevitable march of automation, while Dębiak's
> acknowledgment that humanity prevailed "for now" suggests he recognizes
> this may be a temporary triumph against increasingly capable machines.
> ------------------------
>
> Sam Altman was reported to be in utter shock. I wonder if he might hire
> this guy back.
>
> Stuart LaForge
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