[Photo by MK DB]

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Kim Young-shub, chief executive officer (CEO) of KT Corp., emphasized the importance of enhancing artificial intelligence (AI)-centric competitiveness during the Mobile World Congress (MWC) 2024 in Barcelona, Spain, on Tuesday.

“While the core business of KT is telecommunications, maintaining a mindset solely focused on telecommunications would hinder growth,” Kim said. “We need to change to continue excelling in our core business and deliver new value to customers.”

He outlined his vision to transform KT into an AICT company, referring to the integration of AI and ICT.

Having assumed the position of CEO in August of last year, Kim has been leading KT for the past six months. He outlined plans not only to provide its in-house large language model (LLM) called Mi:dm but also to offer third-party LLM as a multi LLM and supply lightweight language models (SLM).

KT is also actively recruiting top talent, aiming to hire around 1,000 professionals this year to strengthen its AI capabilities.

Regarding investment plans for AI competitiveness, Kim noted that “there has not been a company that solely holds the top spot for a long time.”

“While I cannot specifically mention any companies right now, we are always exploring potential opportunities,” he said.

KT also plans to launch business-to-consumer services related to AI, allowing general consumers access to AI-related products this year.