Koo Kwang-mo's LG AI Research Institute Accelerates Collaboration with Affiliates... Productivity Soars, Costs Drop

Koo Kwang-mo, Chairman of LG Group

[Asia Economy Reporter Jeong Hyunjin] LG Group Chairman Koo Kwang-mo's dedicated artificial intelligence (AI) technology organization, 'LG AI Research Institute,' which he is nurturing as a future core business, is accelerating collaboration with affiliates. They are considering practical ways to utilize AI to increase productivity while reducing costs and are applying it across various sites.

According to the industry on the 10th, LG AI Research Institute has signed non-disclosure agreements (NDAs) with 16 LG affiliates and is continuously communicating with the AI support departments of these affiliates, focusing on developing AI technologies that can be utilized in the field. LG AI Research Institute was launched in December last year with active support from Chairman Koo. He announced plans to invest about 200 billion KRW over the next three years in securing global talent and AI research and development, and recruited Professor Hongrak Lee, a world-renowned AI scholar from Google and the University of Michigan.

The current achievements of LG AI Research Institute are in improving productivity and reducing costs in the production processes of each affiliate. A representative example is the use of AI to predict the remaining lifespan of electric vehicle batteries, which has reduced costs and production time. To check the remaining battery life, the battery must be fully charged and then discharged. By applying AI in this process to monitor the battery status, the amount of energy injected was reduced by 80% compared to the full charge standard, and production time was cut in half.

Research is also underway to apply AI in inspection work to filter defective products at production factories such as LG Electronics. The method involves AI learning data from good products and judging any deviations as defects, applying this approach on-site. LG AI Research Institute expects that applying AI will reduce the inspection time per LG Electronics refrigerator to about one-third of the previous time, thereby increasing productivity.

LG AI Research Institute is also studying ways to reduce consultation time by about 20% by applying AI technology to call centers of affiliates such as LG Electronics and LG Uplus. Additionally, they are developing technology that allows AI to detect abnormal situations in advance when customers using LG Uplus's internet and IPTV services experience issues. Furthermore, LG AI Research Institute introduced AI into the drug candidate discovery process with LG Chem's Life Sciences Division, significantly shortening the discovery period. While it generally took 3.5 years to discover drug candidates, LG AI Research Institute explained that this has been reduced to 3 to 4 months.

While rapidly developing AI technologies that can be applied on-site through collaboration with affiliates, LG AI Research Institute is also conducting basic research. In just the past four months this year, they have published eight papers through AI-related conferences and journals, achieving research results. Researcher Jang Jongsung of LG AI Research Canada, located in Toronto, Canada, said, "Corporate AI research tends to overlook basic research because it must be connected to business, but LG AI Research Institute is different. They allow us to focus on research itself and encourage us to quickly abandon projects if they don't seem promising. With less burden from failure, we definitely take on more challenges."

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