[FN This Person] "AI, into everyone's daily life"... Kim Nam-hyun, CEO of East Aid

[Financial News] East Aid, which operates the search portal ZUM, has begun its transition to an AI search portal with its "AI 1-second summary". Kim Nam-hyun, CEO of East Aid (photo), said in an interview with Financial News on the 21st, "The 'AI 1-second summary' is not just an added feature, but the first step in changing the search paradigm from 'searching for' to 'providing answers'," and emphasized, "East Aid aims to establish itself as a platform leading the popularization of AI."
He added, "Instead of relying on past data, we create answers by analyzing the latest information from news, blogs, and communities generated now in real-time, and minimize bias and distortion by cross-verifying information from multiple sources." 
CEO Kim highlighted ZUM's unique competitive edge as △data analysis know-how accumulated over more than 10 years △an open AI portal not dependent on specific technologies △insights to identify the most important current issues. He emphasized, "In particular, insights are not just about search term rankings but about analyzing social contexts and trends to summarize and organize must-know information, which is ZUM's unique strength."
The transition to an AI portal is extending to lifestyle services such as shopping, travel, and finance. CEO Kim explained, "The goal is to create an 'AI expert assistant' that reduces users' worries and time," adding, "In shopping, it analyzes reviews and price trends to recommend the best products, in travel, it provides customized travel plans by synthesizing flights, accommodations, and reviews. In finance, it analyzes complex news or disclosures to answer 'What is the key issue of this stock?'"
CEO Kim stated, "We aim to evolve into a 'hyper-personalized AI assistant for all users'," and revealed plans to focus investment on small language models (sLLM) optimized for specific areas like shopping and finance to provide faster, more accurate, and cost-effective services, securing data competitiveness and technology leadership.
In particular, CEO Kim emphasized that "as technology advances, the weight of social responsibility grows," stressing AI ethics and social responsibility. He said, "We prioritize 'trustworthy AI' as our top value, adhering to three principles from the design stage: privacy protection, fairness, transparency, and accountability verification, and strengthening user feedback."
East Aid is a subsidiary of ESTsoft, which recently joined the LG AI Research Institute consortium as one of the five elite teams of 'National AI'. CEO Kim stated, "While ESTsoft is the R&D hub developing the engine, the heart of AI technology, East Aid is the forward base that implements that engine into actual products to meet the market and users," emphasizing, "We have established a virtuous cycle structure by applying the latest AI models to services first, obtaining feedback from millions of users, and refining the model by feeding it back to ESTsoft." He also expressed pride in the data competitiveness that is difficult for other companies to imitate.
Finally, he summarized his management philosophy as "technology should be directed towards people." He said, "AI should lead everyone's daily life in a better direction," and expressed his wish to be remembered as a leader who "put AI in everyone's hands" and a manager who led stable growth.

yjjoe@fnnews.com Yoonju Cho, Reporter