Ryu Younger-sang, CEO of South Korean telecoms large SK Telecom, informed CNBC that AI helps telecoms corporations enhance effectivity of their networks.
Manaure Quintero | Afp | Getty Photos
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 undertaking will function South Korean applied sciences from semiconductors to software program, as Seoul seems to be to create a close to self-sufficient AI business and place itself as an alternative choice to 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 among the nation’s different outstanding corporations together with LG and Naver.
“We’re going by way of an vital juncture when it comes to our technological improvement. 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 muse mannequin workplace at SK Telecom who additionally leads the corporate’s consortium, informed CNBC.
“Korea has many entities that might excel at creating a giant AI business. And we may clearly see the chance that we’re very able to creating a very good 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 might be essential to AI.
For instance, SK Hynix makes high-bandwidth reminiscence (HBM) which is important to Nvidia’s merchandise. Samsung can also be one other main reminiscence participant. SK Telecom has been increasing its enterprise into information 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, also called foundry.
“This implies the nation possesses your complete AI stack, from chips to cloud to AI fashions, and likewise advantages from a sturdy group of superior AI researchers who’re actively publishing papers and securing patents,” Nick Persistence, observe lead for AI at The Futurum Group, informed 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 develop into the gold normal for coaching AI fashions.
In the meantime, SK Telecom will prepare the fashions it develops by itself Titan supercomputer, which is made up of Nvidia GPUs, in addition to an AI information middle the corporate is creating with Amazon.
AI mannequin roadmap
SK Telecom shouldn’t be new to the AI mannequin sport. The corporate launched a beta model of its first chatbot primarily based by itself massive language mannequin in 2022 referred to 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 top of the 12 months, Kim stated. It is going to be initially centered in the marketplace in South Korea, however may very well be used globally. The mannequin shall be open-source, that means it is going to free for builders to make use of and construct on, probably with some licensing necessities.
Any AI fashions popping out of South Korea’s undertaking will face intense competitors from gamers together with OpenAI and Anthropic in addition to most of the robust open-source choices out of Chinese language corporations like Alibaba and DeepSeek.
Creating an AI mannequin will not be an issue, given SK Telecom and different corporations’ already-proven monitor document in doing so.
The larger problem shall be placing ahead fashions that may compete with these popping out of frontier AI labs, that are pouring billions of {dollars} into analysis and improvement. One other situation shall be getting traction amongst builders to construct upon these fashions. That has what has made a hit 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 when it comes to efficiency with these massive tech (gamers) like OpenAI or Anthropic,” Kim informed CNBC.
He added that there shall 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 most recent 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 an alternative choice to U.S. and Chinese language-developed techniques.
“Past home advantages, a confirmed sovereign AI mannequin presents vital export potential. Simply as Korea excelled in reminiscence chips, this might develop into a precious product for different nations in search of options to U.S. or Chinese language techniques, strengthening Korea’s place within the world 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 companies, which governments see as having strategic significance, must be constructed inside a rustic and run on servers positioned 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 important sectors like healthcare, finance, protection, and authorities, nations can not afford to cede management of their digital intelligence to overseas entities.”
