About 100 business leaders and professionals gathered in Seoul for an AMCHAM workshop on workplace AI, workforce skills and corporate risk. The useful point: the discussion paired practical uses for AI with the training and safeguards companies need to make adoption stick.
Watch Desk analysis
What happened
The Korea Times reports that the American Chamber of Commerce in Korea held its HR Workshop 2026 at the Grand Hyatt Seoul on 27 October. Speakers discussed AI’s role in productivity and employee capabilities, as well as cybersecurity, data-access rules, human oversight and legal and organisational challenges.
The workshop also featured the K-New Deal Academy, a youth vocational training initiative that works with companies on industry-specific training. Google’s Chenie Yoon presented findings from the company’s ATLAS study on how AI is being used for tasks including brainstorming, research and complex problem-solving. OpenAI’s Eum Sung-won said ChatGPT can help employees reduce repetitive tasks and focus on work requiring judgement and creativity.
Why it matters
The workshop’s agenda reflects a workplace question more useful than “Will AI change jobs?”: what skills, rules and oversight are needed as organisations put it to work? A training initiative linking young people with companies offers one practical route, while cybersecurity, data access and human oversight address the less glamorous work that sits behind adoption.
The report describes a workshop and its speakers’ views, not proof that these approaches improve productivity or that the training initiative has delivered results. Still, it gives a concrete snapshot of how business, government and technology voices are framing workplace AI in South Korea.
Our read
The strongest message is that buying AI tools is the easy bit. Building employee confidence, setting clear expectations and deciding who oversees consequential decisions are harder, less photogenic jobs. A workshop can put those issues on the table; the test is whether companies follow through beyond the conference room.
What to watch
- Whether companies take part in the K-New Deal Academy and what training it provides.
- Whether AI workplace discussions produce clearer rules for data access and human oversight.
- Whether the productivity claims translate into measurable results for workers and employers.
Discussion spark: When companies adopt AI, should they prioritise training employees to use it well or setting stronger rules on where and how it can be used?
Sources and evidence
- Source update (27 October 2026, 07:39 UTC)
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