In the AI Era, Companies Want Hires Who Are Willing to Keep Learning

Gu Bon-kwon, director of the research institute, pointed out that SK hynix wants to assess soft skills in job interviews for new hires. He said the most important of these is learning ability.

No one knows what work they will face or what problems they will need to solve. The point is that the eagerness to learn and solve whatever problem comes up is a capability that hard-skill comparisons cannot capture. Generative AI is already a tool inside companies, so the safest skill to set against it is being a person who can keep learning and solving problems as circumstances change.

This is an era in which AI knows more than people and finds answers even better.

Director Gu cited the case of GPT-6 Astra scoring a perfect score on the Korean college entrance exam and solving a math problem unsolved for 90 years. He also noted that Fields Medal winners issued a joint statement that mathematics should no longer be used in AI-era education.

Still, Gu said, what matters is not the competition between humans and AI but the differences among people. Because AI is already built into companies, the question becomes who handles it most wisely and who collaborates best with it.

When a writer cannot find the right expression, they now ask AI, and delegating summarizing and translating has become common. Reporter Lee noted that while immediate productivity rises, many worry that as people hand over one task after another to AI, their thinking ability will decline.

Director Gu said that cognitive outsourcing is not new. Marshall McLuhan viewed technology as an extension of human senses, comparing clothing to an extension of the skin and glasses to an extension of the eyes. Past tools widened human abilities, but generative AI replaces thinking and judgment and can weaken those functions, so it is different in nature, he said.

As the saying goes that there is no royal road to learning English, Director Gu explained that traditional learning meant climbing step by step yourself. Yet whenever a new environment or tool appeared, people had to form a new relationship with it and learn new methods.

The internet weakened mental arithmetic but did not stop people from thinking. AI, by contrast, stops the thinking process itself, Director Gu pointed out as the biggest difference. He added that even deciding what to do yourself and what you can hand off in the AI era is not easy.

In the past, there were many stepping stones, such as memorizing isolated facts like history first, and those who failed to cross that threshold often became discouraged and gave up subjects early. Director Gu said the reasons to give up a subject early have decreased in the generative AI era.

Instead of frustration at being unable to catch up, AI offers a method tailored to each person. Even when a lack of foundations keeps someone from reaching the essence, they can fill the gaps by continuing to ask and solve with AI. Director Gu viewed this as giving learners who struggle a good partner.

Calls to emphasize soft skills existed long before AI. Creativity, critical thinking, collaboration, and communication were recurring keywords in vocational education and talent discussions even before the internet spread.

That leaves the question of what has newly changed in the AI era. The speaker explained that AI lowers the barrier to learning and becomes a good partner for people who had struggled to learn.

In the past, there was a royal road, a set answer that this is the way to go, but now there is none, and people can differ greatly. Hard skills have clear objective indicators and evaluations, while soft skills do not show up as easily in numbers.

SK hynix announced it would assess soft skills through in-depth interviews without considering academic background at all. Director Gu called this an ironic change. The company intends to look at problem-solving, creativity, and communication skills.

Director Gu was skeptical that Korea's admissions system would change. Even if early admissions were reduced, regular admissions expanded, or school record evaluations altered, he argued, the basic structure would not change because selection methods alone do not alter the system. He cited the fact that parents and students crowd into a few prestigious universities as the reason admissions will not change.

Starting from the premise that the admissions structure rarely changes, Director Gu offered a choice. People must decide whether to believe that surviving that competition is all that matters, or to accept the competition while not fully embracing an inhumane learning system and cultivating other abilities instead.

He also offered the judgment that future demands will be for abilities more important than admissions scores. The companies will seek talent with soft skills, and SK hynix's case is that signal, he said. Since AI will be built into companies, people who learn creatively and solve problems on their own initiative in any situation represent the essence and future of study.

Director Gu noted that big tech hired many developers but was also the first to cut them. He said this is a repeated pattern: when people flock to a promising field, it is quickly automated. He also pointed out that a major that looked promising at college entrance often fails to stay that way by graduation.

Many developers concluded that since AI does coding better, they should look for another field. Half of them, however, used generative AI tools to cut a month's work to two weeks and felt energized, saying a team could now do what used to take ten people.

Director Gu said the difference comes from whether AI is seen as a threat or as a tool for accomplishing one's mission. He predicted this pattern will appear not only in coding but in nearly every field.

Director Gu quoted Saint-Exupéry's *Citadel*: if you want people to build a ship, do not hand them materials and tools and teach them methods; instead, awaken in them a longing for the boundless sea. Shipbuilding techniques will keep changing, so desire matters more than method.

People who have desire are not swayed by whatever new technology appears. If they believe it helps their dream, they learn harder than anyone and learn even without being told. Generative AI is a powerful tool, but it becomes the best tool for people who hold a strong vision or mission.

Director Gu said that just as excavators and dump trucks reduced the need for manual labor, office and professional jobs will not disappear but will change in role. He explained that the structure in which one person does the work of hundreds will apply equally to all office and professional jobs.

He also argued that two professionals skilled with AI could outperform ten people doing the same work. Believing one's own field will be unaffected is, in his view, a mistaken belief.

Signs are already visible. Certified public accountants have gone for years without trainee intake, and the role of lawyers is shifting as legal AI emerges. He added that we need to ask whether this trend is temporary.

No job escapes its influence, so the question is how wisely it is used. Not using AI does not mean being untouched by it, he said; the key is how wisely one uses it.

When everyone uses AI, new problems emerge, and those become the challenges and work of the future. Incidents such as deepfakes and Hugging Face hacks were problems that could not have been imagined before.

Director Gu cited the case in which the whole country was fooled by a fake image of Gulbak-ku, the wolf-dog that escaped from Daejeon's O-world in April. It was a new problem created by generative AI.

That such a problem arises means it also creates new professional and social demand to handle it. He predicted we will keep facing problems that never existed before.

In art and writing, there has been debate over whether work made with AI is still art. Director Gu answered that the standard is not whether AI was used, but whether, through using or not using AI, one produced a better result.

Director Gu said that fans do not pursue their passion for comfort. In areas they truly love and want to immerse themselves in, they do not let AI take over that fulfilling experience just to get the satisfaction of a result.

He compared it to watching the film *Odyssey* in IMAX yourself rather than substituting a plot summary for the experience. He also stressed that the purpose of study lies in accepting desirable difficulty.

In the past, process and result came together, so people naturally learned desirable difficulty. Director Gu worried that now they have separated, creating a risk that people will use shortcuts and loopholes only.

Studying is hard, and one can only persevere by accepting in one's heart that it will help. Director Gu said that how to cultivate desirable difficulty in the AI era is an unchanging essence of study.