Winners
Hall of Fame
Overcoming the biggest challenges in AI development and creating AI at a human level for the betterment of all requires a robust and extensive community. Solving the most intricate issues of our era is a task that cannot be accomplished by an individual, especially amidst the time constraints posed by multiple global crises.
Thus, Community Challenges are the key to advancing AI. Lab42 would like to honor Challenge team leaders/ winners by showcasing them in a Hall of Fame, highlighting their achievements and personalities as first place winners. If you haven’t done so already, compete in one of our Running Challenges and grab your spot on this page.
1st place
David Gamez
31. March 2023
"A new Generation of intelligent Machines"
David Gamez, Senior Lecturer at the Department of Computer Science at Middlesex University, explains his draw to the AI field: "Artificial intelligence is an opportunity to model natural thinking and intelligence, which can help us to understand ourselves. It is also one of the most challenging, fun, and interesting areas of computer science!"
His recent accolade, winning the Essay Competition on Virtual Worlds, was no coincidence. Gamez reveals: "I entered the competition because the title question was closely aligned with my research […]". Currently, Gamez's research is focused on a groundbreaking project: "I am currently working on a new universal measure of intelligence, which will enable us to compare the intelligence of humans, animals, and AIs on a single scale," he shares. His vision for AI's future is the creation of large multimodal models, "In the medium term, I think that people will build better large multimodal models that work across natural language, video, sound, emotions, and other inputs. When these models are embodied in robots and connected to sensors, we will see a new generation of intelligent cognitive machines".
As for human-level AI, Gamez holds a realistic view: "Right now, we have systems that are more intelligent than humans in the environments that they are designed for. For example, AIs are more intelligent than humans in the game of Go. In my opinion, we are a long way from AIs that can match human intelligence in our natural and social world."
1st place
Simon Ouellette
31. January 2023
"Don't follow the Hype"
After years of programming and consulting in industrial optimization, financial services and business information management in Montréal and New York, Simon began his AI career. His expertise and experience led him to AI-powered agricultural technology and financial trading.
With such a multifaceted background, it was no surprise that Simon earned first place in the Essay Challenge. His interest in truly understanding intelligence, "one of the most important mysteries of the universe," and his skepticism of current hype in the AI field led him to thoroughly research and consider the principles of intelligence. In Simon's view, today's AI does not exhibit intelligence, so we need to address the big problems first.
Simon is now focusing his efforts on building a virtual world that allows algorithms to learn abstract reasoning and ARC solving. This endeavor includes both ARCathon 2023 and our latest Essay Challenge on Virtual Worlds.
1st place
Michael Hodel
13. January, 2023
"ARC is rather addictive"
Michael is a local talent from Zurich, Switzerland, pursuing his Master’s degree in Computer Science at ETH. What brought him into AI is a mix of his fascination for technological advancement, his liking for science fiction, and his interest in mathematics and programming. He believes that much more advanced AI will be the most significant invention ever.
We asked him what factors made him win the competitive ARCathon 2022: “My programming experience was definitely very useful when working on my solution approach for ARC. However, I consider my time investment to have been the biggest driver, something that, fortunately enough, came easy due to finding ARC to be a very fascinating problem and great fun to work on. Even though it takes some work to get off the ground, I can only encourage anyone curious to dive into it, it is rather addictive, and the odds are great that the experience will be joyful.”
In that spirit, Michael is currently focused on continuing to work on ARC alongside his studies at ETH, hoping to contribute to eventually solving it. He is looking forward to participating in the ARCathon 2023 and curious to see what further approaches the community will come up with.
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