"Advanced Encyclopedia." A 15-year-old high school student has swapped sports for technology and is developing an AI assistant to help with learning. How teachers view it

Programming instead of football

Dmytro Obolensky lives in Brovary with his father, a programmer, his mother, an economist, and his younger brother. As a child, he, like most boys, was fond of football. However, he decided not to become the future Ronald, because at the age of 13 he was captivated by the technical sphere. The guy accidentally came across a video on YouTube, where they talked about robotics and programming. He began to study the topic in more detail and, as he recalls, realized that it was not difficult, and even very interesting.

Dmytro taught himself to program. It all started with a book by Paul Berry, «Head First. Python,» which he was given as a gift. It is an easy-to-understand guide to Python, created on the basis of the latest achievements in cognitive science. According to the guy, everything in the book was useful to him. He believes that with the help of the information collected there, he learned to program from scratch. Further, the help of his father greatly contributed to his studies.

The guy liked Python the most, but he says that he also often uses C++, and in the future he plans to learn C#.

At the source

Later, the Small Academy of Sciences of Ukraine (MAS) entered Dmytro’s life when, in the 9th grade, a friend suggested that he write his own project. In September of last year, the idea of ​​developing it was not long in coming.

During online learning, Dmytro noticed that many of his classmates had difficulty understanding the lesson topic, especially in physics. Students sought explanations from various artificial intelligences, such as ChatGPT, Gemini, Copilot, which in turn gave them incorrect answers.

What can an AI assistant do?

The solution developed by Dmitry works as follows:

• download the lesson plan as a text file;
• ask a question on the necessary topic.

The AI ​​assistant will provide answers in text or voice messages. In addition, the program has the ability to identify voices for asking questions and has a voice interface, which can help people with visual impairments.

The program takes answers exclusively from the information provided, which in turn almost completely eliminates the possibility of an incorrect answer. Dmytro is sure that the solution can be useful for students or various support services that are usually asked monotonous questions.

«Advanced Encyclopedia»

The first users and testers of the AI ​​assistant were Dmytro’s classmates. «It is people like them that my project is primarily aimed at,» the guy noted.

According to reviews, the students liked the program. «Because it was something new and something that really works,» adds the young developer. The teachers were not too opposed to its use, but considered the solution, according to Dmytro, only as an advanced encyclopedia.

About the details of the process

The program is written in Python. In addition, the guy used ChatGPT in his work. It took Dmytro about a month to develop it. The most difficult and unexpected stage was the forced transition to a newer version of ChatGPT.

The project is currently in the final stage of development:

• it is possible to choose the size of the interface,
• voice recognition and generation added.

Additionally, Dmytro translated the AI ​​assistant into English.

Participants, money and recognition

The guy did all the work himself, sometimes asking for help from his scientific supervisor, mathematics and computer science teacher Olena Zhiglii. However, in the future, the developer plans to invite someone to help with releasing the solution on various platforms, such as the Microsoft store and Google Play.

Dmytro did not invest money in the development, only his knowledge and skills. He still wants the project to be completely free, and people who want to support it could send funds to him personally.

The project has already been recognized at the international innovation competition INOVA 2024, held in mid-October last year in Zagreb, Croatia, where it took second place.

About plans

For now, Dmitry is forced to suspend work on the solution. All his attention is currently occupied by a new project that can help our military. However, he does not leave the idea of ​​developing an AI assistant. As soon as he manages to free up time, the guy plans to take up the opportunity to distribute the program on various platforms, in particular, Microsoft store or Google Play, where people from all over the world will be able to use it.

After graduation, the young developer is already planning to enter Kyiv Polytechnic Institute to fulfill his dream of becoming a programmer. However, he doesn’t dare to think too far ahead.

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