SKT Declares AI Company: "People at the Core of 7 AI Values"... Reflected in Management System

[Asia Economy Reporter Seulgina Cho] "Human-centered Artificial Intelligence (AI)."

SK Telecom, which has declared its transition to an AI company, has taken its first step in earnest by establishing AI pursuit values centered on "people." By applying seven core pursuit values such as social value and harmlessness throughout its management system, the company plans to provide AI services for its customers. This also represents the direction of the surviving corporation after the company’s spin-off.

◇ Human-centered AI Pursuit

According to SK Telecom on the 13th, the company has concretized the "7 AI Pursuit Values" under the slogan "Human-centered AI - Coexisting Together, Aiming Higher."

Based on this, SK Telecom plans to establish specific measures to apply these values throughout its management system, including reflecting them in company regulations and developing AI service checklists. This is an extension of the declaration made by SK Telecom CEO Park Jung-ho at the shareholders' meeting in March, stating, "This year marks a major turning point, and we will become a genuine AI company."

The seven pursuit values consist of ▲Social Value ▲Harmlessness ▲Technical Stability ▲Fairness ▲Transparency ▲Privacy Protection ▲Sustainable Innovation.

First, "Social Value" refers to utilizing AI’s potential usefulness as a tool to solve societal problems. "Harmlessness" acknowledges the difficult limitations AI faces and aims to check and address anticipated risks from AI service design to operation stages to ensure safer services. This emphasizes a more cautious approach to prevent a recurrence of incidents like the AI chatbot Iruda controversy that sparked social debate earlier this year. This is closely related to another of the seven pursuit values, "Privacy Protection." Considering AI’s nature based on data learning, SK Telecom urges strict compliance with personal information protection regulations and efforts to ensure safe data management.

Additionally, as Korea’s leading telecommunications company with over 30 years of experience providing communication services, SK Telecom has included "Technical Stability" among the seven AI pursuit values. The company explained that this reflects its responsibility to provide stable services to customers anytime and anywhere.

◇ Full-scale Transition to an AI Company

SK Telecom’s move aligns with the direction of the surviving corporation after the spin-off, which is expected to be completed within the year. Previously, SK Telecom officially stated that after the spin-off, the surviving corporation will expand AI and digital new businesses based on its leadership in 5G.

The value of human-centered AI forms the foundation of this. Furthermore, AI will play a role in organically connecting products and services across the entire ICT family, including SK Telecom’s core mobile network operator (MNO) business, media, security, and commerce.

The human-centered philosophy has been important to SK Telecom since the early days of its AI development. The "ai.x Conference," held since 2018, has emphasized the need for an AI ecosystem for people. Recent services introduced by SK Telecom, such as AI-based care services for the elderly living alone and "SafeCaster," which checks COVID-19 safety levels nearby, also focus on AI applications that enhance social value for people.

Kim Yoon, CTO of SK Telecom, said, "Establishing AI pursuit values is the first step for SK Telecom to transform into an AI company. Since AI services are hyperconnected services involving unspecified many participants and inherently imperfect, we will strive to provide human-centered AI services to customers through efforts to strengthen internal education, establish product lifecycle management (PLM), and develop checklists."

SK Telecom plans to incorporate the AI pursuit values into company regulations within this month, ensuring that all members regard them as the foundation of management activities. These values will also be applied to various service PLM processes. The company intends to secure ethics at every stage where AI is applied, from service review to customer feedback.

An expert advisory group has also been formed. The advisory group includes Professor Oh Byung-chul of Yonsei University Law School, Professor Park Sang-chul of Seoul National University Law School, Professor Kim Hyun-kyung of Seoul National University of Science and Technology, Yoon Seok-won, CEO of AI social enterprise Testworks, and Professor Oh Hye-yeon of KAIST.

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