Marco Casalaina, Vice President of Microsoft Azure AI, is giving an online video presentation on ‘A-2 Session: Work Innovation Using AI’ at the Global Talent Forum 2024 held at Grand Walkerhill Seoul in Gwangjang-dong, Seoul on the 31st. From the left, Professor Kim Sang-gyun of Kyung Hee University Graduate School of Business, Shin Min-ho, leader of POSCO’s Digital Innovation Office, and Lim Eun-young, head of LG CNS’ Generative AI Business Division. Reporter Lim Hyeong-taek “I originally couldn’t speak a word of Korean, but now I can speak it.”
When Marco Casalaina, Vice President of Azure Artificial Intelligence (AI) at Microsoft, appeared online at the ‘Work Innovation Using AI’ session at the ‘Global Talent Forum 2024’ held on the 31st and spoke like this in fluent Korean, the room was agitated. This is a video that he synthesized according to his voice and mouth shape through an ‘AI video translator’. Vice President Kasalaina emphasized that this branch is a ‘new look’ to be welcomed in the workplace in the AX (AI conversion) era.
Vice President Kassalaina said that while AI has been limited to receiving human instructions through a single means such as text or voice and providing passive answers, it is now ‘multimodal’ that can understand and think through various means at the same time. It is expected that this will be a basic ability.
At the same time, he asserted that the emergence of AI assistants (agents) will dramatically improve productivity. Vice President Kassalaina explained, “Now AI can act, think, learn, and even analyze directly in the office,” adding, “Thanks to the assistant, you will be able to focus on more creative work.”
Shin Min-ho, leader of POSCO’s Digital Innovation Office, who also participated in the session, introduced POSCO’s in-house GPT platform, ‘P-GPT’, and said, “POSCO is a steel company, but the role of AI has become so important that productivity comes from coding.” He advised that we need to be patient as AI is just being introduced. Leader Shin said, “We are at the stage of encouraging employees to use AI more,” adding, “It is too early to put pressure on them to produce specific results.”
He also argued that the emergence of large-scale language model (LLM) utilization platforms such as ChatGPT is actually an opportunity for recruiters. He explained, “If applicants who have abilities but cannot express them well stand out in the job market, it opens up opportunities for companies to recruit good talent.”
Lim Eun-young, head of LG CNS’ generative AI business division, said that the work areas where generative AI can be best utilized are labor-intensive fields such as customer service such as call centers. He said, “Companies need to constantly think, ‘Wouldn’t fixed costs be able to be further reduced if we converted that work to AI?’” and “The gap between companies that use generative AI and those that do not will soon widen significantly.” said.
Director Lim also noted that designers are already making good use of image creation AI such as Dali and Midjourney. He said, “I thought there would be a fear from the designer’s point of view that this kind of AI could replace their job, but when I heard their opinions directly, it was not true.” “The number of works submitted has increased to 10, which means that work productivity has increased tenfold,” he said.
The three speakers on this day diagnosed that the type of talent that companies want will also change. They commonly emphasized ‘open mind’. This means that people who accept the technology and can use it creatively to effectively utilize AI in the workplace will have an advantage in the job market.
Reporter Kim Jong-woo jongwoo@hankyung.com
