Need for Public and Private Corporation Is Urgent
Trend of Google’s artificial intelligence (AI) AlphaGo is changing South Korea’s industrial map. This is a global war without any gunshots to prepare for so-called ‘4th Industrial Revolution’. South Korean Government is also speeding things up for application and industrialization of AI and is going to launch task force for it and establish research institutes just for AI.
According to ICT (Information Communication Technology) industry on the 14th, 4th Industrial Revolution is emerging as a big change that will bring great innovations to production and consumption fields based on AI, Big Data, IoT, Cloud technology and others and was proposed as the major topic in Davos Forum that took place in Switzerland in early this year. Competition for AI technologies, which are considered as major task in 4th Industrial Revolution, has already started.
IBM has already preoccupied a technological structure with ‘Watson’ and ‘Deep Blue’. Google has secured its own independent area in AI field with not only AlphaGo but also with self-driving cars, Machine Learning Program and others. Competition for preoccupying AI field is becoming very fierce as CEO Elon Musk of Tesla invested $10 million into MIT’s research on AI.
However South Korea is still behind in AI technologies. Although South Korean Government and some businesses are doing research on AI, size and result of their research falls short of global businesses. According to Institute for Information & Communication Technology Promotion, level of South Korea’s AI technologies is behind by 2.6 years from advanced countries’ AI technologies.
“Technological innovation based on AI will induce fundamental innovation in all areas such as industries, employments, services, lives and others.” said Director Seo Byung-jo of National Information Society Agency. “Conversion of current manufacturers, service businesses, ICT is very important.”
It seems that AlphaGo’s trend is expected to act as the trigger in South Korean Government’s investment on R&D on AI although it is a bit late. South Korean Government has taken first step towards AI technologies. Ministry of Trade, Industry and Energy held ‘AI Application and Industrialization Meeting’ under First Minister Lee Kwan-seop with experts from different industries, universities, and research institutes at KOEX on the 14th.
“There is still a huge room to improve in AI application and industrialization since even advanced countries are still in early stages of developing AI technologies.” said Minister Lee. “We are going to enforce our support for AI technologies and actively push to drastically ease regulations.
To accomplish such matter, private and public organizations are going to develop and commercialize AI technologies, promote people who are specialized in this area, secure data that is necessary to use AI, and prepare consensus within South Korea’s society to expand AI technologies.
South Korean Government is going to greatly increase its support for R&D on AI. It is going to increase size of yearly funding for R&D on current robot, self-driving car, and drone areas from $10.9 million (13 billion KRW) to $16.8 million (20 billion KRW) and establish ‘Task Force for AI Application and Industrialization’ at Korea Evaluation Institute of Industrial Technology.
To promote excellent people that are specialized in AI, South Korean Government is going to select outstanding research teams from major South Korean universities and provide funding for R&D on original technologies for industrialization. It is going to produce manpower from universities and consortium of small and middle-sized companies and link this to direct employment.
South Korean Government is also going to lay out policies to form consensus within South Korea’s society and launch private consultative committee to eliminate any elements that will cause morality issues and to overcome any insecurity about employment due to expansion of AI.
Ministry of Science, ICP and Future Planning (MSIP) has also decided to speed up its work to implement ‘Intelligence Information Society’ that uses AI technologies. MSIP is going to support establishment of ‘Intelligence Information Technology Research Institute’, which will be comprised of private organizations and set up during first half of this year. It is going to jump into technological competitions with flagship R&D projects and also establish ‘Intelligence Information Society Plan’ that responds to any changes in society and economy that will be brought by development of technologies.
There are some people that South Korean Government needs to focus on improving regulations and vitalizing private ecosystem if it wants to improve effects of its policies. “Rather than large-sized development of technologies led by South Korean Government, challenge projects that use open sources will play important roles in forming an ecosystem.” said Professor Lee Min-hwa of KAIST. “It is urgent to change paradigms of regulations of Big Data and Cloud that become fertile soil for AI.”
Staff Reporter Yang, Jongseok | jsyang@etnews.com
