Full-scale Construction of 'Data Dam'... 20 Types of AI Training Data Selected

[Asia Economy Reporter Joesulgina] As part of building a 'Data Dam' that will serve as the foundation of the digital economy, the government has finalized 20 projects for this year's artificial intelligence (AI) training data construction initiative. The goal is to build and open large-scale high-quality data essential for AI development.

According to the Ministry of Science and ICT on the 21st, this year, 20 projects worth 39 billion KRW were promoted, doubling the number from last year. A total of 92 businesses participated, showing an average competition rate of 4.6 to 1.

In designated calls, 10 projects were selected, including large-capacity video content AI data (KDX), autonomous drone flight video AI data (Ulsan University Industry-Academic Cooperation Foundation), visual information-based question-answering AI data (EuclidSoft), and sign language video AI data (Testworks). The open call included 10 projects such as disease diagnosis image AI data (National Cancer Center), road environment panorama image AI data (Allforland), and fitness posture image AI data (Slick Corporation).

The Ministry of Science and ICT selected projects with high national and industrial utilization value and urgent data acquisition needs in areas such as ▲natural language processing that can understand human emotions and context, ▲autonomous driving technologies including cars and drones, and ▲convergence fields like voice, vision, and language. Additionally, projects addressing disease diagnosis (dementia, oral diseases, etc.), healthcare fields such as exercise, ▲deepfake prevention technology that maliciously alters human faces, and ▲areas that can improve the lives of people with disabilities were included to enrich citizens' lives and solve social problems.

The Ministry of Science and ICT plans to create jobs by building AI training data using a crowdsourcing method applied comprehensively to all projects this year, following the implementation of two projects via crowdsourcing last year.

Furthermore, through the 2020 supplementary budget, the AI training data construction project will be expanded. A total of 150 types of AI training data will be built and freely opened through the AI integrated support platform AI Hub (www.aihub.or.kr).

The Ministry of Science and ICT emphasized, "Small and medium-sized enterprises and startups face difficulties in directly building the necessary AI training data due to cost burdens and lack of manpower, so there is a high demand for securing high-quality data," adding, "Securing a large amount of high-quality AI training data needed in the market can be a solution to rapidly enhance South Korea's AI competitiveness in a short period."

They also added, "Through this supplementary budget, we will expand and build AI training data on a large scale to gather it in the Data Dam and support its use in various AI technology research and commercialization service development," and "through this, we expect to secure new driving forces for quality job creation and economic growth."

This content was produced with the assistance of AI translation services.