Ryu Younger-sang, CEO of South Korean telecoms big SK Telecom, instructed 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 know-how, in a uncommon transfer to maintain the nation apace with the U.S. and China.
The challenge will function South Korean applied sciences from semiconductors to software program, as Seoul appears to be like 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 big 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 distinguished corporations together with LG and Naver.
“We’re going by means of an vital juncture when it comes to our technological improvement. So Korea, on the nationwide stage, 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, instructed CNBC.
“Korea has many entities that may excel at creating an enormous AI business. And we may clearly see the chance that we’re very able to creating a superb AI stack,” Kim added.
A “stack” refers to varied applied sciences that make up a product or different know-how.
South Korea’s forte
The initiative goals to attract on the strategic place of a few of South Korea’s corporations and the know-how they develop which might be essential to AI.
For instance, SK Hynix makes high-bandwidth reminiscence (HBM) which is crucial to Nvidia’s merchandise. Samsung can 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, often known as foundry.
“This implies the nation possesses all the AI stack, from chips to cloud to AI fashions, and likewise advantages from a strong group of superior AI researchers who’re actively publishing papers and securing patents,” Nick Persistence, observe lead for AI at The Futurum Group, instructed CNBC.
Given the intricacies of know-how 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 into the gold customary 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 information heart 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 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 top of the 12 months, Kim stated. Will probably be initially centered in the marketplace in South Korea, however might be used globally. The mannequin will probably be open-source, which means it can free for builders to make use of and construct on, probably with some licensing necessities.
Any AI fashions popping out of South Korea’s challenge will face intense competitors from gamers together with OpenAI and Anthropic in addition to lots of the sturdy 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 report in doing so.
The larger problem will probably 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 problem will probably 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 sturdy 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 instructed CNBC.
He added that there will probably be fashions of various sizes that can be utilized by completely different industries.
An open-source nationwide AI mannequin may additionally present advantages by giving companies throughout the nation entry to the most recent know-how with out having to depend on a tech big from overseas.
In the meantime, South Korean AI fashions might be positioned as an alternative choice to U.S. and Chinese language-developed techniques.
“Past home advantages, a confirmed sovereign AI mannequin presents important export potential. Simply as Korea excelled in reminiscence chips, this might turn into a precious product for different nations in search of options to U.S. or Chinese language techniques, 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, ought to 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 crucial sectors like healthcare, finance, protection, and authorities, nations can’t afford to cede management of their digital intelligence to overseas entities.”
