KR — ZDNet Korea

Who Works Better? SK Telecom Employees' AI Agents Go Head to Head

AINovember 3, 20261 min read

SK Telecom held an internal contest where employees showed off AI agents they built themselves. The agents are already used in real jobs, such as checking power bills and tracking attack servers behind malicious smartphone apps.

What happened

SK Telecom ran the final round of 'AX Spark,' an internal AI agent contest, and gave awards to the best entries. Five finalists competed on how well they made work faster and helped the whole organization become more productive. The agents were made by employees and are already used in daily work.

Key numbers

173 entries were submitted from August to October.
5 entries reached the final round.
About 180,000 telecom equipment units across the country are covered by one agent (PYLON).
More than 5,000 work AI agents were built inside the company this year.
20 top entries were picked through monthly preliminary rounds.

Why the company is doing this

SK Telecom is pushing a plan called 'One Person, One Agent.' Employees get internal AI communities, development platforms, and job-specific training so they can build and use AI themselves. An AI agent is a program that can carry out tasks on its own, not just answer questions.

Why it matters

The contest shows AI being used for real work, not just tests. Agents now handle tasks like automation, network management, customer service checks, and security threat analysis. SK Telecom plans to spread the best examples to other teams, so AI use may grow across the whole company. CEO Jung Jae-heon said AI is changing the way people work, not just helping with small tasks.

What to watch

Whether the winning agents are applied to other teams across SK Telecom.
How far the 'One Person, One Agent' plan expands in the company.
Whether the multi-agent platform ATLAS can handle work tasks on its own in practice.

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