17, aspiring AI researcher: I built a tool that maps what you’ve actually built in AI

Hey everyone, I’m Alex, the 17 year old founder of AI-Atlas.

A bit about me: I want to become an AI researcher. I’ve been building ML projects for almost 2 years, and earlier this year I won a gold medal at the International Conference of Young Scientists 2026, with a bio-ML project. Doing research that young taught me something frustrating: the work is what matters, but almost nobody looks at it. Applications, scholarships and internships ask for grades, titles, degrees and CVs, and a CV can’t show whether you’ve actually trained a model, shipped an agent or built a pipeline that works.

Why I built AI-Atlas: I wanted a way for anyone, whether a student, a self-taught builder or someone without a famous school on their CV, to prove what they can do with evidence instead of claims.

What I’m building: AI-Atlas (getaiatlas.com) reads your public GitHub and maps what you’ve actually built in AI. Each project is assessed, you get an Atlas Score and level, and there’s a live leaderboard by country. Paid users get a personal roadmap and a prediction of where their work is heading. A resume says what you claim; your Atlas shows what you’ve built.

What’s working: Small developer communities. Traffic from DevHunt and the Hugging Face Discord converts at about 45% from scan to claimed profile. In the first weeks, 94 developers were mapped and 25 verified builders from 10 countries joined the leaderboard. We launch on Product Hunt this Friday (Oct 30).

One thing I need: Intros to people who hire or train AI engineers, such as bootcamps, AI-education platforms and technical recruiters. I want to learn whether a verified “proof of work” score is something they’d use or pay for.

If you code, scan your GitHub and tell me where the score feels wrong. That’s the most useful feedback I can get. And if you’ve built something in research or AI yourself, I’d love to hear about it :)🙌

Whether you code or not, I’d love to connect. Say hi below or DM me!