Alumnus Yoon-soo Kim, the sixth Kaggle Grand Master, is the youngest master in South Korea. Although he may be regarded as a qualified AI talent in light of his excellent capabilities among the top 0.1% of AI experts worldwide, his career is contrary to expectations. This is because, as a graduate student from Daewon Foreign Language High School, he is a non-major computer scientist with an economics background. His interest in AI was first sparked by a liberal arts class on programming in the fall semester of his sophomore year. This chance encounter aroused his interest in program development, and he became immediately obsessed with AI.
“My innate inclination matched well with that of a developer, and AI was a field of enthusiastic interest at that time. Thus, I light-heartedly decided to “give it a try.” In the meantime, creating new things based on logic, and enabling code blocks to work immediately in a visible format, was more entertaining than I had imagined.”
However, a non-major`s self-taught method to learn AI is a challenge. He primarily focused his efforts on online courses rather than thick AI theory books. He examined AI theories through courses from “Coursera,” a global online learning platform and rudimentary books on deep learning, and acquired high-quality information through Google searches for difficult problems. Increased confidence motivated him to pursue real applications. At that time, he chose Kaggle to gain field experience.
“To raise rankings on the leaderboard page of competitions was like a role-playing game. The reward was greater than I imagined. (Laugh). As rankings rise in the computer game, amusement and satisfaction became higher every time rankings rose in Kaggle. As trivial enjoyment naturally led to interest and passion for the latest technologies, I wrestled with approaches to resolving various problems.”

Youngest Kaggle Grand Master in South Korea

Kaggle Competitions, also called the “AI Olympics,” is an AI competition platform. Any global company, such as Microsoft and Intel to start-ups, requests this community to “solve a problem(s) they face with AI,” and Kaggle holds a contest. Because Kaggle is an information-sharing community where the latest AI-related trends and new technologies as well as various competitions are first available, the number of registered users at Kaggle has reached approximately 5 million worldwide.
Kaggle operates with a unique system that calculates rankings and ratings according to competition results. There are a total of five ranks, and anyone who becomes a grand master, the highest rank, would win five gold medals, which are given to the top 10 teams (0.2%) at each competition. Of the approximately 190,000 professional AI developers active at Kaggle, there are only 286 grand masters. Alumnus Yoon-soo Kim gained the honor of becoming the sixth and youngest grandmaster in South Korea in 2021.
“The experiences at Kaggle competitions served a key role in my growth as an AI developer. In addition to broadening my horizons, I was able to acquire unique approaches to problems by determining which methods should be used for a given problem, and which method is effective. More than anything else, these experiences opened up a new path to an AI developer.”

What He Has Obtained through AI

Alumnus Yoon-soo Kim joined the “Global Residency,” an Upstage AI talent training program for one year in 2020 to gain mentoring from experts and practical field experiences. Furthermore, he participated in another competition with Sanghoon Kim, the third grandmaster in South Korea and team leader of the Upstage AI Challenge Team, and achieved good results. This tie naturally led to his joining this company, and he is currently working in the Upstage AI Challenge Team. Alumnus Yoon-soo Kim, remarking that “I am arduously learning as a less than one-year newbie in the company,” is steadily participating in Kaggle competitions while developing practical skills related to AI technology development with colleagues who are filled with a unique unbridled passion for AI.
Leading a different life through AI, he has high expectations for the future that AI may bring. He is employing efforts to become a better AI developer for the new world arising through AI, which has infinite and inexhaustible potential.
“I see the unlimited potential of AI. It is not surprising that someone develops something beyond our imagination, and new research and application cases continue to arise at the right moment. ChatGPT, which has recently appeared, is a perfect example. Similar to other developers, I intend to become a person who can create globally competitive AI models in any form of technology and yield benefits to society through inventions.”