'KT Koo Hyun-mo Administration' That Ignores Age and Rank... Training 1,000 AI Talents

Koo Hyun-mo Emphasizes 'ABC Competencies' at the 2nd Cohort Entrance Ceremony of the 'Future Talent Development Project'

Koo Hyun-mo, CEO of KT
Photo by Yonhap News

[Asia Economy Reporter Seulgina Cho] "Develop differentiated ABC competitiveness."

KT CEO Koo Hyun-mo's talent experiment, which disregards age and rank, has entered its main phase. The core is the so-called ‘ABC’ capabilities that combine 5G technology with artificial intelligence (AI), big data, and cloud. In his first year in office last year, CEO Koo trained about 400 AI practitioners with ABC capabilities, and this year he continues his talent experiment. He plans to nurture more than 1,000 AI and digital transformation (DX) talents by next year.

◆ Koo Hyun-mo: "Digital transformation starts with AI talent development"

According to KT on the 11th, CEO Koo held the second class entrance ceremony for the ‘Future Talent Development Project’ to nurture in-house AI and DX talents that morning. This project is KT’s talent development initiative launched last year by CEO Koo to secure key talents leading AI, cloud, and DX fields.

This reflects CEO Koo’s belief that talent development is the most urgent task to leap beyond the framework of a ‘telecom operator’ and become a digital platform company (Digico). Attending the second class entrance ceremony, CEO Koo emphasized, "KT is transforming into a digital platform company based on telecommunications," adding, "By establishing differentiated ABC competitiveness and leading digital innovation in other industries, KT will also become a newly growing company."

The 78 trainees selected for the second class range in age from 26 to 55. Their ranks also span a wide spectrum from staff to assistant manager and manager. KT recruited second class applicants through a company-wide open call without restrictions on age, department, or rank.

Going forward, they will devote themselves full-time for five months to education and AI·DX practical project tasks. Specifically, education and practice will be conducted using KT’s big data along with project tasks carried out by the first class last year. A KT official explained, "In addition to AI and cloud fields, the B2B (business-to-business) DX field was newly established for the first time in this second class."

KT also runs a ‘Field AI·DX Talent Development’ program conducted part-time alongside work. This program discovers AI·DX tasks in customer-facing departments and solves on-site problems. CEO Koo said, "I hope they will play a key role leading growth as KT’s future talents," and urged, "I hope they take on challenges confidently and freely."

◆ 400 AI certification holders produced last year alone

CEO Koo’s talent experiment is evaluated as having caught two rabbits: quantitative expansion and performance growth in his first year.

First, KT produced about 400 AI certification holders last year through the AI competency certification system. Also, various employees unrelated to AI work or non-science majors successfully completed the first Future Talent Development Project and are currently assigned to core AI·cloud departments performing their duties.

A first-class trainee who ranked 290th worldwide by receiving a master grade on Kaggle, Google’s AI competition platform, in July last year said, "It was a valuable time to challenge a new area, and it was beneficial to internalize the training process and apply it to actual work."

About 60% of the projects carried out by the first-class trainees were adopted as immediate commercialization tasks. Representative projects include developing an AICC (AI Contact Center) virtual consultation voice bot and wireless core network failure prediction analysis and automation. Most projects improved services with customer-centric thinking and brought internal work innovation.

A KT official explained, "The remaining projects (excluding immediate commercialization tasks) are reflected in KT’s business plans this year and are being continuously promoted." KT plans to nurture more than 1,000 AI·DX talents by next year through the Future Talent Development Project and AI competency certification system.

This content was produced with the assistance of AI translation services.