"We're discovering brilliant ideas from middle and high school students who can change our lives with artificial intelligence (AI), coding them together, and presenting outstanding works."

POSCO ICT (CEO Son Geon-jae) will hold the "POSCOICT 2020 AI Challenge" to discover and award outstanding ideas and applications of middle and high school students based on AI technology.

In order to participate in the event, we can write and submit the results of creative ideas, source codes for programming, and applications that can change our lives by applying AI to all sectors of society such as education, health and entertainment. Details can be found on POSCO ICT's website (www.poscoict.com) and can be submitted online by June 28.

The participants' submissions will be evaluated from the perspective of originality, feasibility and ripple effects, and the teams that will advance to the finals will be selected. AI engineers from POSCO ICT will participate in the second round of the finals as mentors to go through a mentoring process that will further refine ideas and source codes at the concept stage. It is expected that teenagers who lacked the opportunity to access AI technology through about a month of mentoring will be able to naturally experience and learn the technologies that are actually used in industrial sites.

Professors of software engineering departments such as KAIST, Yonsei University and Korea University will participate in the final screening as evaluation committee members to enhance fairness and credibility. The award will be divided into the Grand Prize (1 team), the Grand Prize (2 teams), the Excellence Prize (2 teams), and the Encouragement Prize (2 teams).

POSCO ICT has been providing AI education to students at digital specialized schools since last year, considering that AI technology is widely applied in real life, but teenagers do not have enough educational opportunities. Starting this year, AI competitions have been held to help young people develop their dreams and hopes by providing them with opportunities to participate in development by discovering creative ideas and coding together.

Yoon Soo-gul, director of POSCO ICT's Corporate Citizenship Office, said, "We have decided to hold a competition to run related education programs and show off our learned skills amid growing interest in AI. We plan to continue to actively practice POSCO Group's management ideology, 'Corporate Citizenship,' by taking advantage of the characteristics of ICT companies."