LG Aimers, Completing the Third Journey

Advancing AI for Young Talents

The third LG Aimers Hackathon, aimed at nurturing future AI experts, was held at LG Academy on September 16-17. LG Aimers is a youth AI talent development program by LG that provides opportunities to enhance problem-solving skills using real data and problems arising in the industrial field, not just theoretical education. It is open to young people between the ages of 19 and 29 who are interested in AI and preparing for employment, regardless of their academic background or major. Introducing the scene of the third LG Aimers Hackathon, which shows an increasing number of participants and outstanding AI capabilities as it repeats.

Developing a Predictive AI Model Based on Actual Sales Data

A total of 108 youths from 43 teams, whose problem-solving abilities were verified in the online qualifier of the Hackathon participated by 1,424 people last August, participated in the offline Hackathon of the third LG Aimers. The theme of this Hackathon was ‘Development of AI model for forecasting product sales volume in online distribution channels’, and participants developed an AI model to predict the sales volume of each product for the next three weeks based on daily sales data for each product from various online shopping malls. The massive data collected from online sales channels contain various variables of the online sales environment rather than simple information. The key was to focus on developing an AI model that reads market trends from this data and predicts actual sales volume. The participants acquired knowledge to solve real problems through AI by conducting data analysis, building datasets, and designing algorithms.

In addition, a ‘Job Fair’ was held over two days for the participants of this competition, featuring the participation of eight affiliates, including LG AI Research, LG Electronics, LG Display, LG Innotek, LG Household & Health Care, LG Energy Solution, LG Uplus, and LG CNS. At the job fair, LG provided opportunities for participants to register in the LG AI talent pool, which could prioritize them for recruitment reviews. Additionally, they offered one-on-one customized consulting services with recruitment specialists. Through various programs that could be experienced on-site, participants were able to build practical skills beyond theory and receive help in career choices and job seeking.

Final Winners of the 3rd LG Aimers AI Hackathon

On the last day of the offline Hackathon, three teams that received the highest evaluations were selected through comprehensive evaluation including participants' leaderboard scores, data analysis, algorithms, applicability, and presentation content. The first place went to team ‘Joohyukyi’, second place to team ‘Steel Mate’, and third place to team ‘Ganji’, achieving the honor of winning.

Team ‘Joohyukyi’, which won first place, received high scores for strategically building a model ensemble based on excellent dataset analysis. In addition, they provided a method to effectively reduce both training and inference times, which was a crucial factor in their first-place win, as it makes the model highly applicable in real industrial settings. Team ‘Joohyukyi’, who won the award, said in their acceptance speech, “First of all, our efforts to create a stable model had a big impact on receiving high scores. During the Hackathon, we were able to enhance our teamwork by asking each other many questions and having discussions.”

Team ‘Steel Mate’, which secured second place, achieved excellent results by presenting data preprocessing, EDA (Exploratory Data Analysis) analysis, and a model that reflects sales patterns and cycles. In addition, the third-place team ‘Ganji’ focused on EDA analysis and applied an ensemble of two models to demonstrate high performance and received good evaluations for overall performance.

The third LG Aimers provides benefits such as exemption from document screening during job application to the three final winning teams including the grand prize (Minister of Employment and Labor Award) and the excellence award (Chief of LG AI Research Award). The total prize money, including the participation support funds provided to all finalists, amounts to 60 million won.

Creating a More Valuable Future Together with LG and Youth

LG Aimers provides young people with free core theory lectures from the leading AI experts in South Korea, covering traditional statistics-based approaches, state-of-the-art AI technologies reflecting the latest trends, and domain knowledge required to solve Hackathon problems. It also offers practical experience opportunities through Hackathons where participants solve real-world problems using actual data. LG AI Research plans to continue supporting the protagonists who make the future a reality by discovering outstanding AI talents with both theoretical and practical skills through the LG Aimers program.