AI shatters legacy industry strongholds, reshaping manufacturing and recruitment

[AI Special Project ②] AI shatters legacy industry strongholds, reshaping manufacturing, logistics, and the recruitment market

Artificial Intelligence (AI), having shattered human intellectual limits, has become the 21st century's most powerful 'strategic weapon,' wielding the fate of nations and corporations. Its overwhelming power is moving beyond advanced IT to completely transform the fabric of conservative legacy industries. Through this special project, NBNTV focuses on the vivid transformation of companies such as POSCO, Samsung Electronics, Hyundai Motor, Coupang, and Dongwon Group, which have innovated to their core through AI. Furthermore, we seek solutions for how Korea can leap beyond being a mere consumer to become a 'global rule maker' in the era of super-intelligence, where the boundaries between daily life and industry are collapsing.

Article Publication Order:

① The 'AI Revolution' Spreading to Global Hegemony Competition... Korea's Survival Strategy for Data Sovereignty ② AI shatters legacy industry strongholds, reshaping manufacturing, logistics, and the recruitment market ③ AI Changing the Industrial Landscape Beyond Daily Life: What Should We Prepare? ④ The Rule Maker of the Super-Intelligence Era: The Next Leap to be Completed by 'K-AI' (Image generated by AI to aid understanding of the article. Google Gemini Nano Banana)

| NBNTV = Kim Min-ho |

Artificial Intelligence (AI) is no longer the exclusive domain of a specific class. Initial forecasts that only professionals in advanced IT industries, such as software development or cybersecurity, would handle it have proven spectacularly wrong. Today, from teenagers to the 50s and 60s generations, people of all ages are searching for information through AI and naturally integrating it into their daily lives and work.

The changes in industrial sites are even more dramatic. In fields where simple repetitive tasks are predominant, a single employee proficient in using AI is creating an overwhelming 'productivity gap,' performing the work equivalent to dozens of people. AI has firmly established itself as a key indicator for evaluating an employee's core competencies, moving beyond being a simple auxiliary tool.

◆ "The fortress of three centuries has collapsed"... AI blast furnaces that control molten iron temperature themselves

Manufacturing was long considered a field where there was no room for AI to squeeze in. This was because mechanization and semi-automated processes were already firmly established, and the prevailing view was that human skilled senses were essential for unpredictable variables. However, AI has completely overturned the paradigm of manufacturing by easily surpassing human limits.

"The fortress of legacy industries that humans built up over three centuries—AI has begun to dismantle and reassemble that solid framework itself in just about 10 years."

[Photo Description = Panoramic view of POSCO Center in Kangnam / Photo = NBNTV]

POSCO is transforming into an intelligent steel mill by constructing 'AI blast furnaces' that collect and learn from thousands of sensor data in real-time to independently control the temperature, composition, and gas flow of molten iron. The steelmaking site, once a symbol of high-risk and high-intensity labor, has significantly reduced accident risks and fuel costs through AI, while also achieving uniformity in quality.

Hyundai Motor has also fully introduced a vision AI-based inspection system to its production lines. It catches minute paint defects and assembly flaws that are difficult to identify with the naked eye in real-time, and perfectly controls production disruptions by detecting equipment failures in advance. Samsung Electronics and SK hynix have also applied AI image analysis technology to the semiconductor wafer process, detecting nano-scale defects to drastically lower finished product defect rates and post-processing costs.

◆ Saved 24,000 hours annually... 'AI Employees' directly commanding logistics warehouses

AI has also achieved dazzling results in the distribution and logistics industry, a representative of legacy industries that require high-intensity labor.

(Bird's-eye view of a Coupang logistics center where AI logistics has been introduced. Photo provided by Coupang)

Coupang, the number one player in logistics market share, is leading innovation with a 'predictive logistics system' that combines big data and AI algorithms. By predicting the order volume of popular products by region in advance and preemptively supplying them to the corresponding center, it has dramatically shortened delivery times while simultaneously reducing massive logistics costs. This proves that even highly advanced systems can evolve one step further through AI.

Dongwon Group has deployed AI employees to its business sites by building its own developed platform, 'Dongwon Agent Studio.' Beyond simple information gathering, AI autonomously performs practical duties such as IT system inspections, logistics dispatching, quote calculation, and sales support. Dongwon Group expects to achieve an annual reduction of 24,000 working hours through this initiative and plans to expand to approximately 50 AI agents in the future.

Furthermore, with the emergence of Naver's personalized recommendation engine 'AiTEMS' and smart unmanned stores that suggest optimal order volumes by analyzing environmental variables like local festivals, AI has already reached a level where it directly replaces human judgment in retail environments.

◆ "Leave repetitive tasks to AI"... The war to recruit 'AI conductors' in the job market

Even manufacturing and logistics sites, once believed to require essential physical labor, are being transformed into intelligent spaces led by AI.

This massive shift in industrial structure is naturally shaking up the recruitment market. AI is no longer an optional tool to reduce working hours. Many companies are now listing AI experience as a core preferred qualification for new hires and are staking their survival on securing talent by establishing dedicated AI organizations.

The talent companies seek now are not those who passively use AI for repetitive tasks. Rather, the ability to create real productivity through continuous research and application—'AI convergence and utilization competency'—will be the most powerful weapon to navigate the upcoming recruitment market.

*Notice from NBNTV: This article was written by the author and subsequently refined and proofread using AI. Images generated by AI are identified in the photo captions.