Przemysław Debiak’s victory in the AtCoder World Tour Finals 2025 Heuristic contest marked a significant milestone in the ongoing competition between human programmers and AI models. The event, hosted by the Japanese platform AtCoder, required participants to solve a single complex optimization problem over 600 minutes, pushing both humans and machines to their limits. Debiak’s triumph, achieved after nearly 10 hours of nonstop coding with little sleep, drew comparisons to the legendary tale of John Henry, the steel-driving man who raced against a steam-powered drilling machine in the 1870s. Both stories emphasize the physical and mental endurance of their respective protagonists, as well as the bittersweet nature of their victories. While Debiak’s win was a testament to human resilience, it also underscored the rapid advancements in AI, raising questions about the long-term sustainability of human dominance in these domains. The contest, which featured the maker of ChatGPT as a sponsor, highlighted the growing importance of AI in competitive programming and the need for humans to continue adapting and innovating to remain competitive. Despite the AI’s second-place finish, the event’s organizers emphasized that the challenges posed by the competition have no perfect solution, only incrementally better ones, a statement that may carry implications for the broader field of AI development and its integration into human-centric tasks.