From internet cafés to international stages, Blix Foryasen—a student from the National University—has become the Philippines’ first Amazon Web Services (AWS) AI League champion.
The AWS AI League is a competition that challenges participants to build, train, and deploy AI models. The league took place over weeks of eliminations in six participating countries, namely Indonesia, Malaysia, the Philippines, Singapore, Thailand, and Vietnam. After a gruelling series of contests, top performers were invited to the Regional Large Language Model League Finals held at the Equarius Hotel, Singapore, where a more extensive real-time test served as the basis of judging, with key experts from AI Singapore and Amazon Web Services forming the jury.
With his various efforts in model distillation and his experimentation with various teacher models, Foryasen’s outputs led him to the finals, showing his aptitude for AI and his adaptability in new situations.
“This challenge revealed AI’s capabilities and limits, proving that human evaluation remains crucial…even with the increasing popularity of AI,” said Brix in an interview with AWS.
The fourth-year computer science student from National University came out on top over 1,300 students across Southeast Asia, becoming the first-ever champion of the competition. With his sights set on the grand final at the upcoming AWS re:Invent event, Foryasen aims to learn more about his field and how he can translate his skills into real-world solutions.