LG Corp. (003550.KS) said Tuesday it held the "LG Aimers Hackathon," a hands-on program aimed at solving industrial challenges through artificial intelligence technology. Since launching in the second half of 2022, LG Aimers has grown into Korea's largest AI talent development program for young people, with more than 20,000 participants to date.
LG Aimers reflects the talent development philosophy of Kwang-mo Koo, LG Group Chairman, who believes that "technology and innovation that change the world begin with talent, and they are the source of national competitiveness." The program is LG's flagship youth AI education initiative.
In this edition, 94 young participants competed after passing online coursework and an online preliminary round out of 2,339 applicants for the eighth cohort of LG Aimers. The challenge topic, set by LG AI Research, was developing a lightweight version of EXAONE, LG's proprietary AI model.
Large language model (LLM) optimization is a technology that reduces model size and improves inference speed while maintaining performance and accuracy. It is also a core technology for running AI models independently on individual devices such as laptops and smartphones.
Participants tackled the challenge of shrinking EXAONE — dubbed Korea's "national AI" — while boosting its performance, producing a total of 27 lightweight EXAONE models. LG plans to release the verified lightweight models on Hugging Face, a global open-source AI platform, so developers worldwide can use them.
The grand prize — the Minister of Employment and Labor Award — went to Park Seo-hui, Jo Ha-young, and Son Min-ju. "Unlike other hackathons that are evaluated purely on skill, Aimers was great because anyone with the willingness to learn could build their abilities through online study," the winners said. "We didn't have deep knowledge of LLMs, but systematically learning cutting-edge technologies through lectures by renowned professors — technologies that are hard to access in school — really broadened our horizons. We'd encourage everyone to participate at least once."
LG awarded a total of 10 million won ($7,400) in prize money to the top three teams based on model performance, code evaluation, and oral presentations. The winners will also receive an exemption from the document screening stage when applying for positions at LG.
"LLM optimization technology is in very high demand at actual business sites, but it is a field where it is difficult to gain hands-on experience through intensive training," an LG official said. "We expect this will help strengthen young people's competitiveness for employment in the AI industry."
LG plans to continue its support with the goal of nurturing a cumulative total of more than 50,000 young AI professionals by 2030 to serve as pillars of the nation's AI industry development. LG Aimers is open to anyone aged 19 to 29 with foundational AI knowledge and coding skills. The program runs twice a year during summer and winter breaks to accommodate academic schedules, offering everything from graduate-level AI lectures to employment support activities entirely free of charge.
On July 5, the day after the competition, LG held a job fair featuring eight major affiliates: LG AI Research, LG Electronics (066570.KS), LG Display, LG Innotek, LG Energy Solution, LG H&H, LG Uplus, and LG CNS.
Human resources officials from each company shared hiring information with participants, provided career counseling, and guided registration for LG's AI talent pool for priority consideration in future recruitment. Professional recruitment consultants also offered personalized one-on-one consulting and mock AI interview sessions to help young AI talent boost their job competitiveness.
