Lee Cheong-jae, head of the AI Center at KB Kookmin Card, believes that the completion of AI transformation (AX) will mean the AI Center will no longer need to take the lead. He explained that the role of the AI Center is to establish a foundation that allows employees to utilize AI in their respective tasks, rather than having a dedicated team develop all services directly.
In an interview with Aju Economy on June 3, Lee compared generative AI to Microsoft Office, stating, "In the future, members will work in an environment where using AI is as natural as using Office tools."
KB Kookmin Card established the AI Center in the second half of last year to oversee its AI strategy and infrastructure, bringing Lee on board as the head. He is an AI expert with experience as the manager of SK Telecom's initial AI model, NUGU, and as the NLP tech leader at Hyundai Motor's AIRS Company, among other roles.
The AI Center is tasked with ensuring that generative AI and AI agents can be applied in real work settings by enhancing the infrastructure, which includes data, application programming interfaces (APIs), and execution environments. While the existing digital and data organization focused on data collection, model training, and service operations, the AI Center is more aligned with creating a company-wide AX execution system.
Lee emphasized that the key to AI transformation in the financial sector lies in building a foundation that enables practical AI usage, rather than merely adopting the latest models. He noted, "Most companies focus on creating AI agents, but without a solid foundation, it becomes difficult to sustain in terms of cost and operations. We must first establish the AX infrastructure to apply AI reliably across more tasks."
KB Kookmin Card is expanding the environment for employees to utilize AI in their work processes through the introduction of ChatGPT Enterprise, M365 Copilot, and no-code/low-code agent builders. The application scope is being broadened, starting with areas that have high practical relevance, such as internal document Q&A, consultation summaries, and marketing support.
* This article has been translated by AI.
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