Public-Private Joint Meeting on Intelligent Information Society… Private Sector-Led 'AI Research Institute' to be Established in First Half of the Year

The government has decided to actively foster artificial intelligence (AI) technology.

Regarding artificial intelligence (AI) technology, which has recently become a matter of national interest following the match between Lee Se-dol 9-dan and AlphaGo, President Park Geun-hye invited about 20 business leaders and experts related to AI and software (SW) to the Blue House on the afternoon of the 17th to hold a 'Joint Public-Private Meeting on the Intelligent Information Society.'

The meeting was attended by Minister of Science, ICT and Future Planning Choi Yang-hee, Deputy Prime Minister and Minister of Economy and Finance Yoo Il-ho, Director of the Software Policy Research Institute Kim Jin-hyung, and Professor Kim Dae-sik of the Korea Advanced Institute of Science and Technology (KAIST).

View our interview: Kim Jin-hyung, Director of the SW Policy Research Institute ( http://www.e4ds.com/sub_view.asp?ch=14&t=1&idx=3171)


▲ Lee Se-dol 9-dan making his first move in the final game of the 'Google DeepMind Challenge Match' (Korea Baduk Association)

At the meeting, President Park emphasized that rather than harboring vague anxieties about AI technology, it is necessary to proactively respond to the AI-centered Fourth Industrial Revolution based on a people-centered, practical approach and our strengths in the ICT sector and cultural capabilities.

At this event, Choi Yang-heeThe Minister of Science, ICT and Future Planning announced the 'Strategy for the Development of the Intelligent Information Industry.' The Ministry plans to invest a total of 1 trillion won over the next five years (2016–2020) in R&D, expansion of the professional workforce, data infrastructure, industrial ecosystems, and fostering convergence industries. It also plans to induce more than 2.5 trillion won in private investment.

To this end, the public and private sectors have decided to jointly establish an intelligent information technology research institute in the form of a corporate research center to consolidate national research capabilities and data. Six companies, including Samsung Electronics, LG Electronics, SK Telecom, KT, Naver, and Hyundai Motor, are participating in the establishment of the institute. The institute is expected to open with a total research staff of around 50 people, with each participating company contributing 3 billion won.

Intensive fostering of 5 fields including language, visual, and spatial intelligence… Training specialized personnel such as AI software developers

The research institute operates through private investment and management, with the government providing research funding for core R&D initiatives such as flagship projects. The institute's role involves securing core intelligent information technologies through R&D, commercialization, and data aggregation for the intelligent information industry, while simultaneously conducting research on applied technologies to commercialize these technologies in industrial sectors.

The research institute has designated the development of intelligent software in five fields—linguistic intelligence, visual intelligence, spatial intelligence, emotional intelligence, and summarization and creative intelligence—as its flagship project and is conducting intensive research. In addition to applied fields, the government plans to support research in basic academic disciplines that will serve as the foundation for the development of intelligent information technology, such as supercomputers, neural chips, brain science and structure, and industrial mathematics.

The establishment of data infrastructure will also proceed, centered around research institutes. The plan is to build a world-class data infrastructure by promoting the sharing and use of data built by the government, companies, and research institutes, respectively.

Specifically, the plan is to promote a data location information service that provides information on data held by domestic private and government entities across fields such as healthcare, culture, and finance; and to establish and release research databases for intelligence fields such as language, vision, and emotion, as well as specialized knowledge databases (medical, legal, patent, etc.) to support the development of expert systems.

In addition, it will establish industrial infrastructure such as computing resources, intelligent information software (language and visual intelligence, etc.), and expert systems utilizing specialized knowledge databases, and provide them to venture companies. It also plans to support startups in the intelligent information technology sector by utilizing the Korea IT Fund (KIF).