Ryu Younger-sang, CEO of South Korean telecoms large SK Telecom, advised CNBC that AI helps telecoms corporations enhance effectivity of their networks.
Manaure Quintero | Afp | Getty Photographs
South Korea has tasked a few of its largest corporations and promising startups to construct a nationwide foundational AI mannequin utilizing primarily home expertise, in a uncommon transfer to maintain the nation apace with the U.S. and China.
The mission will characteristic South Korean applied sciences from semiconductors to software program, as Seoul seems to be to create a close to self-sufficient AI trade and place itself as a substitute for China and the U.S.
The Ministry of Science and ICT (MSIT) for Korea introduced that 5 consortia have been chosen to develop the fashions. One is led by SK Telecom, a telecommunications large in Korea and consists of gaming agency Krafton and chip startup Rebellions amongst different corporations.
There are different groups led by a number of the nation’s different outstanding corporations together with LG and Naver.
“We’re going by way of an essential juncture by way of our technological growth. So Korea, on the nationwide degree, is specializing in making certain that we lay the technical basis to have our competitiveness,” Kim Taeyoon, head of the inspiration mannequin workplace at SK Telecom who additionally leads the corporate’s consortium, advised CNBC.
“Korea has many entities that might excel at creating an enormous AI trade. And we may clearly see the likelihood that we’re very able to creating AI stack,” Kim added.
A “stack” refers to numerous applied sciences that make up a product or different expertise.
South Korea’s forte
The initiative goals to attract on the strategic place of a few of South Korea’s corporations and the expertise they develop which can be essential to AI.
For instance, SK Hynix makes high-bandwidth reminiscence (HBM) which is vital to Nvidia’s merchandise. Samsung can be one other main reminiscence participant. SK Telecom has been increasing its enterprise into knowledge facilities. Whereas Rebellions, which is a part of SKT’s consortium, is creating chips designed to deal with AI workloads.
Samsung, in the meantime, has its personal chip manufacturing enterprise, often known as foundry.
“This implies the nation possesses the whole AI stack, from chips to cloud to AI fashions, and likewise advantages from a sturdy neighborhood of superior AI researchers who’re actively publishing papers and securing patents,” Nick Persistence, observe lead for AI at The Futurum Group, advised CNBC.
Given the intricacies of expertise provide chains, nobody nation can do it alone. The consortia will nonetheless depend on graphics processing items (GPUs) from American agency Nvidia which have turn out to be the gold normal for coaching AI fashions.
In the meantime, SK Telecom will practice the fashions it develops by itself Titan supercomputer, which is made up of Nvidia GPUs, in addition to an AI knowledge heart the corporate is creating with Amazon.
AI mannequin roadmap
SK Telecom isn’t new to the AI mannequin recreation. The corporate launched a beta version of its first chatbot based mostly by itself massive language mannequin in 2022 known as “A.” which is pronounced “A dot.” Since then, it has developed extra superior variations of the mannequin and chatbot.
SK Telecom’s consortium plans to launch its first mannequin by the tip of the 12 months, Kim stated. Will probably be initially centered available on the market in South Korea, however may very well be used globally. The mannequin will likely be open-source, that means it would free for builders to make use of and construct on, doubtlessly with some licensing necessities.
Any AI fashions popping out of South Korea’s mission will face intense competitors from gamers together with OpenAI and Anthropic in addition to most of the robust open-source offerings out of Chinese firms like Alibaba and DeepSeek.
Creating an AI mannequin will not be an issue, given SK Telecom and different corporations’ already-proven observe file in doing so.
The larger problem will likely be placing ahead fashions that may compete with these popping out of frontier AI labs, that are pouring billions of {dollars} into analysis and growth. One other subject will likely be getting traction amongst builders to construct upon these fashions. That has what has made successful of different open-source fashions, like these from Alibaba.
SK Telecom’s Kim stated the aim is to create fashions that may rival these different corporations.
“Our first aim is to create a really robust state-of-the-art open supply mannequin and we have already got an instance of these open supply fashions that are on par by way of efficiency with these massive tech (gamers) like OpenAI or Anthropic,” Kim advised CNBC.
He added that there will likely be fashions of various sizes that can be utilized by totally different industries.
An open-source nationwide AI mannequin may additionally present advantages by giving companies throughout the nation entry to the illegal act expertise with out having to depend on a tech large from overseas.
In the meantime, South Korean AI fashions may very well be positioned as a substitute for U.S. and Chinese language-developed programs.
“Past home advantages, a confirmed sovereign AI mannequin presents important export potential. Simply as Korea excelled in reminiscence chips, this might turn out to be a useful product for different nations searching for options to U.S. or Chinese language programs, strengthening Korea’s place within the international AI panorama,” Persistence stated.
AI sovereignty
Underpinning this push from South Korea is the idea of “sovereign AI” that has gained traction with many countries.
That is the notion that AI fashions and providers, which governments see as having strategic significance, needs to be constructed inside a rustic and run on servers situated domestically.
“All main nations are more and more involved about AI sovereignty because the US and China vie for AI dominance,” The Futurum Group’s Persistence stated.
“Given AI’s rising affect on vital sectors like healthcare, finance, protection, and authorities, nations can not afford to cede management of their digital intelligence to overseas entities.”