Ryu Young-sang, CEO of South Korean telecoms large SK Telecom, informed CNBC that AI helps telecoms corporations enhance effectivity in their networks.
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South Korea has tasked a few of its greatest 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 venture will function South Korean applied sciences from semiconductors to software program, as Seoul seems to create a close to self-sufficient AI business and place itself as a substitute for China and the U.S.
South Korea’s method units it other than the best way different nations and areas are approaching AI, based on analysts.
“While sovereign AI is a growing trend, South Korea’s approach is distinct,” Nick Patience, follow lead for AI at The Futurum Group, informed CNBC. “The country aims to combine its dominance in memory chip production with the development of indigenous AI.”
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 are going through an important juncture in terms of our technological development. So Korea, at the national level, is focusing on ensuring that we lay the technical foundation to have our competitiveness,” Kim Taeyoon, head of the inspiration mannequin workplace at SK Telecom who additionally leads the corporate’s consortium, informed CNBC.
“Korea has many entities that would excel at creating a big AI industry. And we could clearly see the possibility that we are very capable of creating a good AI stack,” Kim added.
A “stack” refers to numerous 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 important to Nvidia’s merchandise. Samsung can also be one other main reminiscence participant. SK Telecom has been increasing its enterprise into knowledge facilities. While 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 referred to as foundry.
“This means the country possesses the entire AI stack, from chips to cloud to AI models, and also benefits from a robust community of advanced AI researchers who are actively publishing papers and securing patents,” The Futurum Group’s Patience mentioned.
Given the intricacies of know-how provide chains, nobody nation can do it alone. The consortia will nonetheless depend on graphics processing models (GPUs) from American agency Nvidia which have develop into the gold commonplace for coaching AI fashions.
Meanwhile, SK Telecom will prepare 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 shouldn’t be new to the AI mannequin sport. The firm launched a beta version of its first chatbot based mostly 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 tip of the 12 months, Kim mentioned. It can be initially targeted in the marketplace in South Korea, however may very well be used globally. The mannequin can be open-source, which 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 venture will face intense competitors from gamers together with OpenAI and Anthropic in addition to most of the sturdy 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 greater problem can 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. Another concern can 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 mentioned the objective is to create fashions that may rival these different corporations.
“Our first goal is to create a very strong state-of-the-art open source model and we already have an example of those open source models which are on par in terms of performance with those large tech (players) like OpenAI or Anthropic,” Kim informed CNBC.
He added that there can be fashions of various sizes that can be utilized by totally different industries.
An open-source nationwide AI mannequin might additionally present advantages by giving companies throughout the nation entry to the newest know-how with out having to depend on a tech large from overseas.
Meanwhile, South Korean AI fashions may very well be positioned as a substitute for U.S. and Chinese-developed programs.
“Beyond domestic benefits, a proven sovereign AI model presents significant export potential. Just as Korea excelled in memory chips, this could become a valuable product for other nations seeking alternatives to U.S. or Chinese systems, strengthening Korea’s position in the global AI landscape,” Patience mentioned.
AI sovereignty
Underpinning this push from South Korea is the idea of “sovereign AI” that has gained traction with many countries.
This 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 situated domestically.
“All major nations are increasingly concerned about AI sovereignty as the US and China vie for AI dominance,” The Futurum Group’s Patience mentioned.
“Given AI’s growing influence on critical sectors like healthcare, finance, defense, and government, countries cannot afford to cede control of their digital intelligence to foreign entities.”
Other international locations are taking totally different approaches to their AI growth. In the Middle East, the United Arab Emirates and Saudi Arabia are relying heavily on American technology to develop AI. In Europe, quite a lot of hope is pinned on French startup Mistral AI to emerge because the area’s main firm in the tech. However, Europe may also have to closely depend on American chips and different know-how.
South Korea is trying to sort out extra elements of the know-how provide chain itself because it builds out its AI capabilities, despite the fact that it is going to nonetheless depend on some infrastructure from corporations like Nvidia in addition to Amazon and Microsoft.
“This comprehensive, full-stack approach positions South Korea to stand out in the global race for sovereign AI,” Patience mentioned.