KT Introduces AI Certification 'AIFB'... Bonus Points for KT and Hyundai Heavy Industries Group Recruitment

[Asia Economy Reporter Seulgina Cho] KT has introduced the AI certification ‘AIFB (AI Fundamentals for Business)’ to nurture artificial intelligence (AI) talent in South Korea. In the future, those who obtain the certification will be given additional points when applying for conversion-type internships. Hyundai Heavy Industries Group has also decided to adopt AIFB at the group level.

According to KT on the 21st, KT has opened AIFB as a private certification to expand the AI base in Korea. After signing a business agreement with the Korea Standards Association in October last year, KT established an evaluation system and operation plan for the AI private certification exam and completed registration as a private certification in July this year. KT’s IT specialized group company, KT DS, participated in the development of the AI education and practice platform AIDU and the design of exam questions.

Originating from KT’s AI talent development program, the Future Talent Development Project, AIFB is designed with a focus on assessing practical AI utilization capabilities required by companies. Currently, 1,400 people have obtained KT’s AI certification.

All AIFB exam questions were developed based on corporate AI use cases and datasets, and to assess actual practical skills, a 100% practical evaluation method is adopted. The AIFB certification exam is conducted online through AIDU.

AIFB is composed of three tracks considering that the required AI utilization level varies depending on the company’s job roles.

First, the ‘Basic’ track is for corporate managers and non-majors who do not know coding but need to understand AI application principles and processes. The ‘Associate’ track is the most general course, targeting planners, analysts, and semi-majors or majors who want to innovate work through AI. The ‘Professional’ track is for developers and majors who handle various types of data such as images and text and lead business problem-solving using AI technology.

Among the three tracks, the Associate course was launched in August, and the Basic and Professional tracks are scheduled to be piloted in the first quarter of 2022 and released sequentially.

The process of upgrading AIFB to a private certification involved AI One Team, a leading domestic industry-academia-research consortium. The AIFB review committee, composed of gurus from KAIST and Hanyang University’s AI Graduate School, supervised the question design direction and enhanced the completeness of practical skill assessment. Hyundai Heavy Industries Group participated in the pilot test to identify improvements and developed questions based on AI application cases in manufacturing and heavy industries.

KT plans to give additional points to AIFB holders with verified AI practical skills when hiring conversion-type interns. Furthermore, Hyundai Heavy Industries Group, the world’s number one company in the global shipbuilding sector, has decided to adopt AIFB at the group level. This year, certification will be conducted mainly for those who have completed DX (Digital Transformation) education within the group, and next year, it plans to expand to all employees in the group to accelerate AI and DX talent development. In addition, 10 KT group companies, including KT’s financial affiliates such as BC Card and K-Bank, have also implemented AIFB.

Jinyoungshim, Head of KT Group Talent Development Office (Executive Director), said, “AIFB is the result of collaboration and joint efforts by KT, AI One Team, and the Korea Standards Association to strengthen Korea’s AI competitiveness. We hope many people prepare for and challenge the AIFB certification to grow into practical AI talents who will lead AI and DT in the domestic industry.”

Myungsik Park, Head of HR and Education at Hyundai Heavy Industries (Executive Director), said, “By introducing the AIFB certification, we aim to verify the effectiveness of DT (Digital Transformation) talent development and use it as a plan and benchmark for digital transformation talent development. We expect to lead not only domestic but also global AI and DT technologies through synergy among AI One Team members.”

Meanwhile, KT plans to launch AI education content linked to AIFB called ‘AIFB Ready’ (tentative). It will be centered on practical exercises of business cases solving problems using Python code and libraries, which are most frequently used in practice.

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