Coupang said on the 31st that it is hiring employees with disabilities for core roles to build a key team that boosts the reliability of its artificial intelligence (AI) services.
Since June last year, Coupang has created and expanded an "AI data quality verification role" for employees with disabilities. Launched with one person, the role has grown in a little over a year into a team of 10 employees with disabilities.
Employees in the AI data quality verification role create and review "answer datasets" to evaluate the performance of external AI models that Coupang uses to detect counterfeits.
They compare AI outputs with the answer data to check key performance metrics such as accuracy and recall. Through this process, Coupang is increasing data completeness and improving the reliability and performance of its AI-based counterfeit detection.
After hiring, the focus, sense of responsibility, and job performance of employees with disabilities received positive internal reviews, and the related team steadily grew in size.
The development of the new role was led by the Inclusive Management Team, an in-house group that supports employees with disabilities. It began with the aim of creating work where employees with disabilities can use technology and expertise in the fast-changing digital industry environment.
In June last year, the Inclusive Management Team recruited teams with demand for talent with disabilities through an internal notice and offline posters. A team responsible for AI training and performance improvement then joined, and part of its existing work was redesigned into roles specialized for employees with disabilities, followed by hiring.
Coupang has worked with the Korea Employment Agency for Persons with Disabilities (KEAD) to hire AI data quality verification personnel, while also creating customized jobs tailored to disability types and job characteristics.
At Coupang, employees with disabilities corresponding to 14 of the 15 legally defined disability types in Korea are currently working. Ages range widely from teens to 70s.
Backed by this hiring expansion, Coupang's employment rate of people with disabilities stood at 3.64% at the end of last year. That exceeds the 3.1% statutory employment quota for private companies. The average employment rate for people with disabilities at large companies remains in the low-to-mid 2% range.
A Coupang official said, "We will support employees with disabilities so they can grow into key players driving the advancement of Coupang's AI technology and improvements in service quality," adding, "We will continue to expand customized jobs so they can fully demonstrate their capabilities in future industries."