SKT Cultivates AI Talent Through University Developer Mentoring Program

Recruitment for the 3rd AI Fellowship Open Until the 16th of Next Month

[Asia Economy Reporter Minyoung Cha] A program is being conducted where participants receive mentoring from SK Telecom experts for five months and directly solve practical artificial intelligence (AI) tasks.

On the 18th, SK Telecom announced that it is recruiting applicants for the 3rd class of the 'SKT AI Fellowship,' which nurtures future talents in the AI field through business field-centered research projects.

Started in 2019, the SKT AI Fellowship is a mentoring program that helps university (graduate) students grow into AI experts by receiving realistic feedback from developers working in actual companies.

In the AI Fellowship, master's and doctoral experts responsible for AI research and service development at SK Telecom participate as mentors, sharing research experiences in real corporate development environments with university (graduate) student developers and advising on ways to enhance project completeness.

Through this AI Fellowship task, university (graduate) student developers can plan and develop AI business models directly related to industry, such as language model-based natural language processing technology, video analysis AI for service robots, deep learning-based video recognition technology, and AI technologies applicable to 5G MEC environments.

SK Telecom supports up to 10 million KRW per team in research funds so that developers participating in the AI Fellowship can focus on their research. The research funds can be used for project promotion costs such as purchasing necessary programs and equipment for development.

SK Telecom expects the AI Fellowship program to be an opportunity for students' growth while the company can also gain service improvement effects through students' creative ideas.

Previously, the research of the 'Korean News Summarization Model Development' team, which participated in the 2nd SKT AI Fellowship last year, led to improvements in the performance of SK Telecom's next-generation AI Korean language model. Heewon Jeon, a manager at SK Telecom who participated as a mentor at the time, said, "The students' passionate research helped secure Korean language research data, which was lacking in the natural language research field."

This year's AI Fellowship presents research tasks centered on SK Telecom's AI technologies and services and selects a total of 11 teams after reviewing the research proposals submitted by applicants. Applications can be made on the program's website until the 16th of next month, and any university (graduate) student interested in AI technology can apply. Applicants can form teams of up to three people and can participate even if on leave of absence. The evaluation is conducted in a blind manner.

Sangkyu Shin, head of SK Telecom's Corporate Culture Center, said, "We plan to provide in-depth mentoring so that university and graduate student developers can apply the knowledge they learned at school to practical work sites," adding, "Companies can learn creative perspectives and passion from students, and young developers can experience corporate work in advance to enhance their capabilities, creating a win-win effect."

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