SK AX wins minister's award for AI talent development program

SK AX's AI talent development program has earned recognition from the Ministry of Employment and Labor, following the company's efforts to boost employee productivity and corporate competitiveness through its in-house AI education and certification programs.

SK AX announced Monday that it received the minister's award at the Government Recognition Excellence Case Presentation Contest for Corporate Qualifications, held under the auspices of the Ministry of Employment and Labor at a human resources development conference at COEX Magok in Seoul on Friday.

The award reflects official government recognition of SK AX's generative AI competency certification program. As a verified program that can be applied immediately in the workplace, the company expects it to spread to other businesses and across the broader industry.

The government recognition system for corporate qualifications is a system under which the government officially endorses outstanding in-house qualification programs that companies operate to improve workers' job skills.

SK AX had its two in-house generative AI education and certification programs — AI Literacy and AI Bootcamp — recognized as Level 2 and Level 1 qualifications, respectively, for generative AI proficiency. The company said this marks the first and only instance in South Korea of a government-recognized certification in the AI competency field.

AI Literacy aims to equip all employees, regardless of job function, with a foundational understanding of AI. The program builds and assesses the generative AI skills needed for everyday work tasks, including document writing, data structuring, spreadsheet use and basic programming.

AI Bootcamp is a training program for specialist AI talent. It develops AI professionals ready for immediate deployment in the field, including by building customized AI agents that connect to internal company data and autonomously carry out tasks.

SK AX has also put in place a management framework to strengthen the fairness and reliability of its certification results. Reflecting the safety, reliability and transparency principles of the AI Basic Act, which took effect in January, the company has worked to minimize bias in test question design and evaluation, with humans reviewing and overseeing final results. It is also rolling out guidance to all employees on disclosing generative AI outputs and complying with ethics guidelines.

SK AX, which operates the SK AI Competency Model — its internal AI qualification system — plans to expand its AI competency certification framework to general businesses and educational institutions.

"This award recognizes the credibility and practical value of the AI competency certification platform that SK AX proactively built," said Kim Min-hwan, head of SK AX's HRX promotion division. "We will continue to develop it into an AI competency certification system that is trusted and used across industry."