What also tends to happen is that you stumble upon a project after it has existed for a while and there are already AI's with PhD-grade algorithms around, that

What also tends to happen is that you stumble upon a project after it has existed for a while and there are already AI's with PhD-grade algorithms around, that are impossible to beat without investing a huge amount of time. That tends to demotivate people. It would be nice if you could develop a contest where such a thing is impossible and even an unsophisticated AI wins some of the time, for instance because the context is manipulated such that being sophosticated is far from optimal strategy.