I heard one word whispered in Arabic, 'Bangladesh'.
I heard one word whispered in Arabic, 'Bangladesh'.
When the award of the first International Artificial Intelligence Olympiad is announced at the King Abdulaziz International Conference Center in Riyadh, the capital of Saudi Arabia, about one hundred contestants from 25 countries are eagerly waiting for the award. Almost all the contestants are secondary level students. Four contestants from Bangladesh, three of whom are only enrolled in Class XI.
There are two parts to the competition. In the first part of the competition, the artificial intelligence knowledge of the participants is verified through a written test. This is called 'Scientific Round'. The second part of the competition called 'Practical Round' is held on a separate day. The final ranking is made by adding the scores of these two categories.
This year's practical round featured data on fire-burned areas, rainfall, temperature, population density—and more—throughout the Middle East and North Africa. The contestants were asked to predict where a fire might break out in the future. The organizers themselves have come up with a good solution. Marks are awarded only if the contestants' solution is better than the organizers' solution, otherwise zero marks. The announcement of the results showed that the Bangladeshi team won two silver medals and two bronze medals. Our award-winning contestants took to the stage with national flags and brought medals one after the other and as the emotional team leader I could only make out one word from the whispers in Arabic around me, 'Bangladesh'.
The New Zealand team leader immediately left the seat and came to me and asked, what do we do? How to prepare? The American team leader looked wide-eyed and congratulated. All members of only two countries received some sort of medal. One is Hungary, the other is Bangladesh.
The story behind this achievement of the Bangladesh team was not very simple, there is also a story of failure. This is the first time that Artificial Intelligence Olympiad has been organized from two places. The first is in Bulgaria, the second in Saudi Arabia. For several years, Bangladesh has done well in various Olympiads including mathematics, robotics, physics, informatics, and the host countries look upon Bangladesh with respect.
The organizing committee of Bulgaria contacted us by itself. But the time available for organizing is very less. Still we accept the challenge of joining this event. The main competition was held in Dhaka with 50 people selected from the online competition. The first 10 people were selected from there. After their training, camp, mentoring, the main four contestants of the Bangladesh team were selected.
At a time when other countries are busy preparing themselves, we have to fight for visas. With the help of various public and private organizations, after overcoming the visa-complexity, an arrangement was finally made to go to Bulgaria. Meanwhile, teachers and students from various educational institutions in the country and outside the country, scientists and engineers from reputed IT institutions continued to train our team online and offline. Our gratitude to them.
Going to Bulgaria, it was found that before the main competition, some other countries, including Singapore, have done a thorough research on some of the solutions submitted by the Bangladesh team online. Seeing them, I can understand that the condition of our team cannot be said to be worse than other teams in the world. But our team failed to get the desired results due to instructional inconsistency and mismanagement in the main competition. The morale of the team is broken. But even if we don't get a medal there, I can understand that the condition of our team is not bad compared to other countries in the world.
Exactly one month later we traveled to Riyadh, the capital of Saudi Arabia. On reaching there, the practice continues the night before the competition. I understand that the team members do not want to make mistakes in order to succeed this time. Instead of their indomitable mentality, hard work and talent, Bangladesh brought four medals each from the first event.
However, the desired goal cannot be achieved by organizing city-based training or competition only. We have to work from all levels on how we can undertake training programs in the whole of Bangladesh in the future. Talking to team leaders of other countries, I understand that training should start from childhood, even if it is a little. It is very important to have high speed internet provision in all educational institutions. By doing this, students will get the opportunity to participate in various competitions online by taking training from online tutorials.
Keeping related books in the school library, creating opportunities for programming training and competition at the district-upazila level, taking various government-private initiatives, conducting workshops at the local level through university students or information technology institutes—everyone can play a role.
There is no such thing as everyone having to learn artificial intelligence. But it is the responsibility of all of us to create the opportunity for the student who is interested in programming, who is interested in artificial intelligence, so that he can acquire world-class skills. They have already given proof of what our students can do if given the opportunity at the King Abdulaziz Conference Center in Riyadh.