Derby College Group students achieve national success at Bletchley Park AI Competition

T Level Software Development students Heritage Ojo and Elwin Oka. Credit: DCG

Two Derby College Group students have secured second place in the final of the inaugural national AI Ethics competition, held at the historic Bletchley Park.

T Level Software Development students Heritage Ojo and Elwin Oka represented Derby College Group in the competition organised by Fsas Technologies, a Fujitsu company, in partnership with technology alliance partners NetApp and Juniper Networks.

The challenge attracted entries from 50 colleges across the UK, with only four teams invited to present at the national final hosted at the National Museum of Computing at Bletchley Park.

Bletchley Park, renowned as the home of the World War Two code-breakers whose pioneering work in cryptography and early computing helped shorten the war, provided an inspiring setting for the next generation of digital innovators tackling the ethical challenges of modern artificial intelligence.

The competition brief asked students to explore the ethical implications of generative AI and demonstrate the importance of strong safeguards and regulation within AI systems.

Heritage and Elwin responded by designing and programming an AI chatbot deliberately engineered to misinform users by consistently producing deceptive responses. Their project demonstrated how easily generative AI systems could be manipulated without appropriate ethical guardrails and highlighted the importance of responsible development and regulation.

Judges praised the Derby College Group team for their technical approach and their practical understanding of real-world computing considerations. ~

Ashraf Merchant, Head of Public Sector at Fujitsu, commended the students for their business-focused thinking around processing speed and memory use, as well as their innovative approach in creating a virtual site to overcome technical challenges that other teams struggled to resolve.

Nipa Soni, AI and Data Specialist at Fsas Technologies, said: “I want to extend huge congratulations to your students Elwin Oka and Heritage Ojo, who both did an outstanding job. I was extremely proud of them. They received excellent feedback from the panel judges, and the way they showcased their working model was exceptional.”

ICT Curriculum Manager Francis Malute from Derby College Group added: “These two students are hugely talented. To come away with such positive feedback at a national competition is a credit to the way they approached the project. Their problem solving skills and fundamental understanding of programming and large language models developed enormously during the process. We are grateful to Fsas Technologies and their partners for supporting computing education in colleges and creating opportunities like this to showcase emerging talent.”

Heritage Ojo said the project helped deepen his understanding of AI development and ethics. “The project was both helpful and educational. I learned new skills such as using Linux commands and gained a deeper understanding of how AI systems work and the ethical considerations behind them. I also discovered concepts I had not encountered before, such as QLoRA and the importance of high-quality datasets when training AI models. It introduced me to powerful Python libraries like PyTorch and Transformers. Overall, it was a fantastic experience.”

Elwin Oka added: “The whole project was exciting. At the beginning, it was challenging because I didn’t have much experience with AI, but I decided to treat the competition as a chance to learn. As I worked through the project, I became more interested in concepts such as tokenisers, Hugging Face and adapter paths. The experience really helped build my understanding and confidence step by step.”

The competition highlights the strength of Derby College Group’s digital and computing courses, which equip students with the advanced technical skills needed for careers in the rapidly evolving technology sector.

Students interested in studying computing or software development at Derby College Group can find out more about available courses by clicking here.