Recently, the government has been accelerating the recruitment of AI talent as NCSOFT and KRAFTON participate in the development of the 'national artificial intelligence (AI) foundation model.' This is to focus on securing AI capabilities, including machine learning (ML) and large language model (LLM) development.
According to the game industry on the 11th, NCSOFT's AI subsidiary, NC AI, has begun hiring AI personnel. This recruitment is proceeding across seven job categories: ▲ AI engineering ▲ AI research and development (R&D) ▲ AI research ▲ audio engineering ▲ language AI research ▲ vision AI research ▲ frontend.
Looking at the main roles, an AI service frontend developer creates user-friendly web interfaces using AI technology and participates in the development of application programming interface (API) platforms and software as a service (SaaS) solutions. Among AI engineering roles, an AI platform developer registers ML models in API form and operates them as a revenue-generating platform. An LLM app developer researches chatbot services to automate customer service (CS) tasks and operational efficiency AI to improve customer service.
KRAFTON has also begun hiring AI personnel. This recruitment is related to five AI-related roles: ▲ AI application specialists ▲ agent-based AI developers ▲ generative AI developers ▲ AI client programmers ▲ physics-based AI agents. KRAFTON is conducting various recruitments, including hiring new employees, ongoing recruitments throughout the year, an internship program, and an AI fellowship program centered around its dedicated research organization, the deep learning department.
These gaming companies are showing efforts to secure related talent as they recently joined the 'national AI foundation model' development project. NC AI has been selected as one of the five major companies, and KRAFTON has joined as a partner in the SK Telecom consortium. This independent AI foundation model project supports the government's initiative to develop a globally competitive national representative AI LLM. It is a key project for realizing the government's vision of becoming a 'top three AI country.' The selected teams will establish themselves as representative AI businesses of the nation with the 'K-AI' label.
NC AI is evaluated to have met the government's requirements in both scale and technical capabilities beyond the limitations of being a gaming subsidiary. NCSOFT has been dedicated to AI research for 14 years since forming a dedicated task force (TF) for AI in February 2011. In February of this year, it spun off that research organization into NC AI. Currently, the development and research personnel affiliated with NC AI number 170. In August 2023, NC AI listed its model as the first domestic LLM on Amazon Web Services (AWS). Recently, it has also released its BARCOVISION 2.0 model, which has shown top-tier performance globally, as open source.
Despite a relatively short period for AI development, KRAFTON is gaining attention for its aggressive approach. Since establishing the deep learning department in 2022, it has rapidly secured key technologies such as natural language processing (NLP), computer vision and animation, speech recognition, and reinforcement learning (RL). This technological prowess is being recognized in academia as well. Last year alone, the deep learning department had more than 20 papers published in top-tier AI conferences, including the International Conference on Machine Learning (ICML), NeurIPS, and ACL. KRAFTON is responsible for multimodal technology development as part of the SKT consortium.
A source in the gaming industry noted, 'The development of the AI foundation model is a key business that will determine competitiveness in both the industry and the gaming sector,' adding, 'The competition for AI talent recruitment is underway, and this is not a short-term phenomenon but will become a long-term battle.'