May 15, 2025
Use OpenAI o3/o4 mini and GPT 4.1 models to help identify possibly hidden archeological sites.
Overview
We challenge you to use technology to identify possibly hidden archeological site(s), using available open-source data. Findings should be reasonably bound by the Amazon biome in Northern South America. Focus on Brazil, with allowed extension into the outskirts of Bolivia, Columbia, Ecuador, Guyana, Peru, Suriname, Venezuela, and French Guiana.
Description
Stretching over 6,000,000 sq km and spanning nine countries, the Amazon Rainforest holds the history of past civilizations and serves as an active home to numerous Indigenous groups. Resources such as satellite imagery and LIDAR are helping to fill in the gaps for a previously unknown part of the world, sparking interest in the region and driving global headlines. There is a pressing need for more collaborative research to identify and preserve these archaeological sites, which are constantly threatened by deforestation and development.
Weaving together open-source collections of satellite imagery, archaeological maps, and Indigenous historical records, a patchwork trail appears, leading to the possibility of new discoveries that fill in missing pieces of the puzzle. AI empowers us to understand the history of millions of people who lived, struggled, and thrived long ago.
You are the digital explorer. Use our new OpenAI o3/o4 mini and GPT‑4.1 models to dig through open data(opens in a new window)—high-resolution satellite imagery, published lidar tiles, colonial diaries, past documentaries, archaeological survey papers. Discover secrets hidden under the canopy as you work through the checkpoints(opens in a new window)—identify possible sites hidden under the canopy (predict and verify the longitude/longitude with two independent methods), suggest new historical insights through gathering irrefutable evidence (package your insights in a write-up), or create a new method for discovery entirely (evaluate a new method for large data processing). Join the community(opens in a new window) and showcase your efforts through the final submission deadline on the evening of June 29th, 2025.
We’ll shortlist the five most exciting teams, and live-stream their discoveries with our panel of subject matter experts, members of OpenAI, and a mystery AI leader, to select the top discovery.
Submissions will be scored first on potential archaeological impact—how convincingly the proposed discovery advances Amazonian history—then on investigative ingenuity, the depth and creativity of your insights, and finally on reproducibility, the ease with which experts can retrace and verify every step of your evidence. Your quest must be supported using OpenAI models to be eligible for participation.
Evaluation
Submissions will initially be screened for eligibility compliance per the following criteria:
- Lists at least two verifiable public sources (e.g., lidar tile ID, paper DOI, satellite scene ID)
- Links open without paywalls or credentials
- No disallowed or plagiarized content
Qualifying submissions will then will be screened and graded for plausibility on the following criteria:
- Evidence depth: Quality and range of data: lidar, multispectral, historical texts, oral maps, etc.
- Clarity of spatial overlays, measurements, and how convincingly they converge on the point
- Reproducibility: Is the explanation concise, logically ordered, and easy for others to rerun?
- Novelty: Did the entrant surface something genuinely new or clever?
- Presentation craft: Smooth visuals, pacing, and the ability to judge questions live
Submissions to all tracks will be evaluated by a panel of judges with expertise in machine learning competitions according to the rubric below.
- Final judging via livestream selection will be at the full discretion of the judges panel.
Timeline
- May 15, 2025 - Start Date.
- June 29, 2025 - Final Submission Deadline.
Finalists are expected to be announced approximately 30 days after the Final Submission Deadline.
All deadlines are at 11:59 PM UTC on the corresponding day unless otherwise noted. The competition organizers reserve the right to update the contest timeline if they deem it necessary.
Prizes
- 1st Place - $250,000
- 2nd Place - $100,000
- 3rd Place - $50,000
In addition to the monetary prizes, we will also give away OpenAI API credits as early-sharing prizes:
- $1,000 in OpenAI API credits per winner
- Recognizing 5 public notebooks that get published in the first 5 weeks
- Must be attached to the Kaggle Competition and must complete one or more of the 5 tasks described here(opens in a new window)
- Try to complete as many of the checkpoints as possible!
Judges
We’re partnering with Kaggle and their developer community to ensure seamless form hosting for this challenge.