A whizzkid from Northampton has qualified as the world’s youngest computer programmer. Kautilya Katariya has achieved the highest grade at GCSE maths, at just 8 years old. The child prodigy is also an IBM certified Artificial Intelligence professional, and is now studying university level computing using internet resources, Yahoo News reports.

Kautilya first became interested in coding during the Covid lockdowns, when he taught himself to use the programming language Python. He swiftly moved on from playing computer games to learning how to code them himself. It seems that there is now no limit to his ambitions, and he hopes to one day have his own computing empire like Bill Gates.

He said: “I developed some AI projects using IBM Watson and Python including a chatbot, voice assistance and an image recognition system to detect fire and smoke. It can be used in places where there’s a high risk of fire so the camera can be connected to my AI model and then it can check if there’s fire or smoke.”

"And if there is, then it can call the fire service. In the future I want to create new AI and set up my own company. It is fun learning with older people, I enjoy it. Programming develops problem-solving skills for future challenges and you can make almost anything using programming.”

As for his ambitions for the future, Kautilya wants to build a robot doctor. He said: "I'd build a robot that could do anything. When you were sick it could be a doctor, if you want to talk it could be a friend. Of if you needed a lift it could be a rocket ship."