Public and Private Sectors Join Hands to Activate the Supermassive AI Ecosystem... Propose "Focus on Mid- to Long-Term Research"

Expert Panel Kick-off Meeting Held
Discussion on Infrastructure, System Improvement, and Talent Development Measures

[Asia Economy Reporter Seulgina Jo] On the 29th, the Ministry of Science and ICT announced that it held a kickoff meeting for an expert consultative body to discuss public-private cooperation measures to revitalize the super-large AI ecosystem, following the AI High-Level Strategic Dialogue.

The consultative body includes private companies such as Kakao, KT, LG, Naver, SK Telecom, and Samsung Electronics, as well as academia, research institutes, public institutions, and government officials to derive specific public-private cooperation plans for the utilization and dissemination of super-large AI. At the kickoff meeting, key tasks such as infrastructure expansion, system improvement, and talent cultivation were discussed.

First, the consultative body agreed to actively open APIs of super-large AI developed by private companies and cooperate to create a shared environment where small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) and research institutes can selectively utilize them. In addition, they reviewed support measures to enable various SMEs and research institutes to fully utilize super-large AI by specifying the number of supporting institutions, the scale of support per institution, and the support methods. Furthermore, they sought cooperation measures to utilize domestically developed AI semiconductors in computing infrastructure related to super-large AI models, such as demonstrating the technology of AI semiconductors developed in Korea to AI model development companies.

In the system and data fields, to enable joint use of data held by companies, they specified the list of data necessary for super-large AI model development and agreed to review legal issues such as the Personal Information Protection Act and Copyright Act that may arise when sharing data. Along with this, they reviewed legal issues that may arise when disclosing APIs of super-large AI developed by companies and sought complementary measures.

In particular, it was pointed out that there could be legal controversies if super-large AI APIs developed using copyrighted data legally for the purpose of improving corporate services are disclosed externally, highlighting the need for institutional supplementation. Additionally, the need for discussions on intellectual property rights protection for content generated by super-large AI was raised to protect the rights of SMEs and startups.

Companies proposed that government research support should focus on common and important mid- to long-term research with a high risk of failure that is difficult for individual companies to undertake alone. Furthermore, to address the shortage of AI talent, it was suggested to discover various university and graduate school-linked programs through collaboration among companies, government, and academia. Specifically, it was mentioned to utilize training data opened by the government through AI-Hub in university and graduate school curricula and to link university curricula with programming education courses (including credit recognition).

The measures discussed on this day will be detailed by field and specific implementation plans will be prepared, then reported to the future AI High-Level Strategic Dialogue.

Park Yoon-gyu, Director of the Information and Communication Policy Office at the Ministry of Science and ICT, said, “The ongoing AI High-Level Strategic Dialogue and its follow-up measures are meaningful as an attempt to unite the capabilities of public and private sectors?from companies on the front lines of competition to academia, research, and government?to compete against leading countries and global big tech companies investing astronomical amounts in AI.” He added, “Starting with the super-large AI field, concrete and practical public-private cooperation in AI will enable the nation’s competitiveness to take a leap forward.”

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