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This interview is an excerpt from <The Masters of Mildang*>, NAVER’s in-company program that listens to the stories of employees in the Corporate sector, working together to create and support TEAM NAVER’s businesses and services with their professional knowledge and experience.

*Mildang : literally meaning push and pull, a Korean slang word for playing hard to get

Improving the user convenience of a technology or service in a fast-changing world requires a long list of considerations, such as tapping into a new field or reforming the service according to the amended law. This is why NAVER has a dedicated team that works with other colleagues to find solutions for a new technology to gain social consensus. Equipped with professional knowledge and experience, this team is called the Agenda Research team.

Q. Tell us about the Agenda Research team.

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Our role is to raise public awareness of projects that reflect NAVER’s sincerity and philosophy, and collaborate and communicate with the academia for new technologies to gain consensus from our users and society.

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The advent of an unprecedented technology often comes with both excitement and concern. Just like how AI technology was at the center of controversy in its infancy for its hate speech and discriminatory statements, AI without ethical guardrails can pose serious problems. Such social discussions motivated us to define the “NAVER AI Ethics Principles” which contains the principles that NAVER must ethically follow when developing and using AI. Our team works with experts to set the standards for AI to be used as a daily tool for humanity, puts those standards together, and makes them public.

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Q. What were the processes involved in defining the AI Ethics Principles?

We worked with the Seoul National University AI Policy Initiative (SAPI) for three years and had countless discussions and conducted tons of research, including meetings with NAVER’s AI experts, external seminars, and study sessions. Such efforts culminated in the establishment of the five ethics principles that would serve as our yardstick for developing and using AI. Further details are available on the “NAVER AI Ethics Principles.”

Q. You mentioned the team’s focus on “projects that reflect NAVER’s sincerity” and “spreading the sincerity to the public.” Could you elaborate more on this?

NAVER is committed to creating technologies and services that can help people like CLOVA CareCall*, and exploring its future direction to make these technologies and services sustainable. Nowadays, we are also dedicated to mutually prospering with small businesses, or Small and Medium Enterprises (SMEs). We wondered how we could support these SMEs, which led to the development of NAVER Smart Store and the “Project Flower” campaign for small businesses to adapt to the digital environment in an easier and more convenient way.

I think the most effective way to raise awareness of NAVER’s activities, sincerity, and social value is to communicate with objectively proven documentation. I would say the “NAVER D-Commerce Report” is a great example. This report is published annually to understand online entrepreneurs and the digital business ecosystem through data, and help sellers self-navigate their way for improvement.

For example, we would analyze the effect of NAVER Shopping LIVE on the sales growth of SMEs. We then tell sellers that both their Smart Store sales volume and sales increased by roughly 50% after livestreaming. As such, this report provides objective data since it is based not only on our internal documents, but also on our collaboration with academic research teams.

*CLOVA CareCall: an AI call service to check on the well-being of elderly individuals living alone and users in need of emotional care

Q. What makes the Agenda Research team unique?

Rarely can you find such cases in other companies where you get to work with professors and the academia on such a project. As someone in charge of finding and verifying objective metrics for the socioeconomic implications of our services, I feel confident that my job has social value when NAVER releases a new technology or service. I also take pride in having this value socially evaluated. ●​