IITP-led seminar on intelligent information technology held
Focus on popularization of artificial intelligence technology accessible to everyone

How will artificial intelligence technology truly change the direction of our lives? As artificial intelligence draws closer than expected, an opportunity has been created to discuss how it is being utilized and how it will transform our daily lives.

Under the auspices of the Information and Communications Technology Promotion Center (IITP), the seminar was held on the 11th at the Korea Chamber of Commerce and Industry International Conference Hall with attendance of approximately 900 people from government, academia, and industry.

"Microsoft's artificial intelligence philosophy is the democratization of intelligence," said Lee Dong-beom, architect at Microsoft, adding that the company aims for artificial intelligence created by anyone, not just data scientists. Microsoft revealed that since last year, it has integrated reporting organizations and consolidated AI scientists into one organization to achieve organizational integration for AI democratization.

Following this, he introduced real-life cases utilizing Cognitive services. The service consists of six components: vision, speech, language, knowledge, search, and lab. A person with visual impairment recognizes the speaker's gender, age, and emotion through smart glasses and outputs the results through voice. Additionally, facial recognition cameras in subway stations are used to predict customer numbers and adjust train intervals by detecting where and when crowds gather. The technology used in these cases is machine learning and artificial intelligence, specifically cognitive services.

Architect Lee Dong-beom stated, "The goal is to prevent artificial intelligence from being monopolized by data scientists and enable everyone to use it, allowing cognitive services to be utilized in various types of businesses."

Na Seung-joo, director at Intel Korea, said, "Intel's role in artificial intelligence, which is reshaping industries, is to lead AI adoption, popularize it, and guide it in the right direction," while pointing out the difficulty of using artificial intelligence, which has significant ripple effects on people's lives. To solve this problem, Intel is investing in acquiring various companies and incorporating the technology and products. Additionally, he explained that Intel plans to develop platforms that help developers and provide education on how to use them.

Jeong Seong-il, executive director at Deloitte, said, "The technological revolution is occurring in the direction of resolving human inconveniences. For artificial intelligence to become the sixth technological revolution, cognitive technology must develop, and for cognitive technology to advance, IoT must be liberated. For IoT to succeed, it comes down to how well big data is utilized," emphasizing that artificial intelligence is an aggregate of cognitive technologies and requires considerable time to develop.

He continued, "Converting specific occupations through automation requires a certain amount of time," adding, "As new business models emerge, the occupations people engage in will change. This will depend on how we deliberate and research how changes will occur, and it seems there is insufficient deliberation on this matter," emphasizing the need to strengthen data processing capabilities in preparation for the artificial intelligence era.

When asked how Microsoft is preparing philosophically regarding artificial intelligence ethics, Architect Lee Dong-beom responded, "Since Tay, we have internally included psychologists and sociologists and are conducting base training on ethical aspects including historical, cultural, and sexual taboos. We conduct pre-training with machine learning, but it is difficult to predict what results will occur."

When asked which business sectors would be effective for investment in an era of coexistence with artificial intelligence and robots, Executive Director Jeong Seong-il answered, "Ultimately, technology will develop in the direction of resolving life's inconveniences." Architect Lee Dong-beom added, "While it seems robots will replace simple tasks, in my personal opinion, I believe they will replace emotional labor and knowledge labor involving vast amounts of data."