[MWC On-site] KT Conducts AI Competency Assessment for Employees... "Survival Format"

CEO Kim Young-seop Holds Press Conference

KT has declared its intention to enhance AI capabilities across the entire company and transform its DNA to be AI-centric. The plan includes hiring up to 1,000 digital specialists this year and launching an AI competency assessment program for employees.

On the 27th (local time), Kim Young-seop, CEO of KT (photo), held a press conference in Barcelona, Spain, where the mobile exhibition MWC 2024 is taking place, stating, "We will become an AICT company that combines telecommunications capabilities with IT and AI."

This year, KT plans to recruit up to 1,000 digital professionals, including experienced hires, specializing in AI and related fields. CEO Kim emphasized, "Securing AI talent and providing an environment where they can fully demonstrate their capabilities to grow into top experts is of utmost importance."

To transform from a telecommunications company into an AICT service company, he expressed a commitment to rapidly internalize world-class know-how and capabilities through expanding open partnerships.

To strengthen the ability to understand and utilize AI, KT will also assess the AI competency levels of its employees. The first initiative is the 'AX (AI Transformation) Degree' program aimed at improving basic IT competencies company-wide.

The AX Degree is conducted in a survival format where participants must meet completion requirements to advance to the next stage. Over approximately six months, detailed courses such as ▲ AI Modeling ▲ Data Science ▲ Digital Literacy ▲ Cloud Infrastructure ▲ KT Data Analytics are offered.

During this program, KT supports obtaining AI and IT-related official certifications, providing exam fees and self-development incentives. Participants can identify and carry out projects applying AI in their actual work.

Since 2022, KT has been directly nurturing AI talent by collaborating with domestic universities such as KAIST, Pohang University of Science and Technology, and Hanyang University to establish AI master's programs, conduct AI research, and run industry-academia projects that link directly to recruitment. Starting next month, graduates from the AI contract department will join KT for the first time to work on AI development tasks.

KT is also applying AI to its core businesses. Using KT’s proprietary super-large AI model called 'Mideum,' it automatically generates content marketing phrases for Genie TV and predicts content popularity ratings with AI to aid original content production.

The super-large AI will be expanded not only as a real-time network-connected service but also on devices such as mobile phones and TVs to provide services directly to customers. In particular, in the financial sector, KT plans to jointly develop a specialized super app to offer AI banking services. In the public sector, it plans to provide cloud services with guaranteed security.

CEO Kim stated, "Through partnerships with global big tech companies, we will provide multi large language models (LLMs) and also offer lightweight models (SLMs) specialized for specific businesses and customers, responding to diverse demands."