ISLE OF MAN STUDENT BRODIE MILLAR COMPETES AT AI OLYMPIAD IN BEIJING

For King William's College & The Buchan School student Brodie Millar, taking part in the 2nd AI Olympiad in Beijing this year was less of a leap and more of a natural progression. Having been involved in Scienece, Technology, Engineering and Mathematics (STEM) competitions from an early age, starting with the Bebras Computing Challenge and the Primary Maths Challenge in primary school, Brodie steadily nurtured a love for problem-solving and coding. What began with playful experimentation in Scratch (a free programming language and online community where you can create your own interactive stories, games, and animations) evolved into deeper explorations with Python (a high-level programming language with dynamic semantics) and eventually into a growing fascination with artificial intelligence after discovering the PyTorch (an open-source machine learning library). 

By securing an Honourable Mention and outperforming many larger teams, Brodie established himself as one of the top young AI talents on a global stage. His success, however, came with some eye-opening lessons. At the Olympiad, he discovered that even his prior knowledge couldn’t fully prepare him for the reality of training AI models at scale. ‘I knew beforehand that optimising a neural network takes a vast number of calculations,’ he explained, ‘but experiencing the practical reality was a bit of an eye-opener.’ Despite the impressive resources available, more than 10,000 GPUs and 5 million CPU cores, training still took time, with some submissions taking up to half an hour to process and organisers even extending the contest schedule to cope with demand. 

The competition itself brought plenty of excitement. Brodie recalls the thrill of watching the scoreboard update in real time, describing it as “edge of the seat stuff.” Beyond the contest, however, it was the AI-enhanced robotics that left a lasting impression. On campus, an AI-powered robot named Galbot acted as a shop assistant, while at the World Robot Expo also in Beijing, Olympiad participants were given exclusive access to interact with robots that could play football, solve tic tac toe, mirror human hand movements and more. “Some of the humanoid robots were spookily realistic,” Brodie said. 

Preparing for the Olympiad wasn’t just about cramming textbooks. Instead, Brodie emphasised the importance of developing thinking skills through activities like brain-teasers and cryptic crosswords. While he had also spent time delving into the advanced mathematics underpinning AI, he admitted this occasionally proved a distraction. “I kept looking for complex solutions when simpler, rougher ones would do. Simple, common-sense solutions are always better.” 

Looking ahead, Brodie sees his passion for AI and computer science continuing into higher education. While still deciding between computer science and engineering, he is certain he wants to pursue a maths-related subject at university. In the meantime, he continues to experiment with custom neural networks, with the goal of creating specialised large language models. 

  
Brodie’s journey highlights just how rapidly AI is evolving and how much potential it holds when applied with creativity and curiosity. From powering robotics and enhancing everyday experiences, to transforming industries and reshaping the way we work, AI is no longer an abstract concept reserved for competitions. It’s becoming an essential tool for innovation. 

For businesses and individuals alike, the lesson is clear: now is the time to explore how AI can be integrated into real-world challenges. As Brodie’s experience shows, success often comes from experimenting, starting small, and approaching problems with practical, common-sense solutions. 

For a recap of the 2025 AI Olympiad in Beijing you can watch the wrap-up vide here. 

The views and experiences shared in this article are those of a third party and are presented for informational purposes only. References to competitions, technologies, and organisations are included to illustrate a  personal journey and do not constitute endorsement by Digital Isle of Man.