Samsung Electronics (005930.KS) is moving beyond simply advancing artificial intelligence toward an "agentic shift" that aligns the technology with security, trust and business environments to deliver tangible results. The plan calls for weaving AI not only across different AI technologies but also into products, manufacturing, design and everyday work practices, changing the company's organizational culture in the process.
Samsung Electronics held Samsung AI Forum 2026 on the 30th at its Seocho office building in Seoul's Seocho district. The theme of the forum, now in its 10th year, was "Agentic Shift: From Intelligence to Impact." Discussions focused on generating results in actual products and workplaces rather than stopping at improving the performance of AI models.
Jun Young-hyun, vice chairman and chief executive of Samsung Electronics, used his welcoming remarks to frame "alignment" as the new challenge in the spread of AI.
"AI is a core driver of innovation in our daily lives, and at the same time it poses new challenges of security, trust and alignment with the business environment," Jun said. "It is time to look beyond technological progress and examine what ripple effects each technology will bring to our society when they converge into one," he added. "We must seek the wisdom of execution together."
At this year's forum, Samsung Electronics put physical AI and continual learning at the center of that direction. The company presented research on "world models," which learn how the real world works to predict the outcomes of actions, and on robot-based AI models. It also introduced personalized AI that learns new information while retaining existing knowledge, and "self-evolving AI" that analyzes users' experiences and frustrations on its own after a product launch to improve performance.
The company is also extending AI beyond products to chip operations. Its Device eXperience (DX) division shared cases of applying on-device AI, physical AI and continual learning technologies to products. The Device Solutions (DS) division presented innovations from applying AI across operations including design and manufacturing.
Global AI specialists also took part. Richard Ho, vice president of hardware at OpenAI, explained in a keynote address the changes agentic AI will bring to companies and industries. David Green, a leader at Amazon Web Services (AWS), laid out security and governance strategies for deploying AI agents safely and economically in corporate settings.
