This Time the Four Heavenly Kings... AI Superstars Visiting Korea One After Another

AI Four Kings Andrew Ng, Stanford Professor, Visits Korea
Following OpenAI's Sam Altman, Key Executives from Google and MS Visit Korea
Showcasing Technology and Exploring Investment Opportunities in Korea

Andrew Ng, considered one of the four kings of artificial intelligence (AI), a professor at Stanford University in the United States, is visiting Korea. Following Sam Altman, CEO of OpenAI, famous for ChatGPT, visits by AI superstars are continuing. This movement aims to showcase technological capabilities and seek investment opportunities in Korea, which has an established AI industry ecosystem.

Professor Ng will visit Korea from the 18th to the 21st. He will visit Korea after Japan on the 13th and Singapore on the 16th. He is a founding member of Google Brain, Google's AI research organization. He led deep learning projects at Google and later developed speech recognition technology at Baidu's AI team. He is one of the four kings who have led the AI field, moving between academia and industry. In the industry, the four kings are referred to as Andrew Ng, the founder of the deep learning concept and head of AI research at Meta Yann LeCun, New York University professor; Geoffrey Hinton, University of Toronto professor who has researched AI at Google for decades; and Yoshua Bengio, University of Montreal professor researching AI with Intel.

From the left, Andrew Ng, Professor at Stanford University, Sam Altman, CEO of OpenAI [Photo by Andrew Ng, Reuters Yonhap News]

Professor Ng operates an AI fund that discovers and invests in AI startups. His visit to Korea is reportedly to meet AI startups and developers. On the 20th, he will visit Seoul National University and Kakao to give lectures. It is said that Kakao has been making efforts to invite him for several months after hearing about his visit to Korea.

On the 13th, Yoshua Matias, Vice President of Engineering & Research at Google, and Johan Schalkwijk, Research Fellow, will visit Korea. Vice President Matias has researched machine learning in the medical field at Google and led the development of conversational AI such as Google Assistant and Live Caption, an automatic captioning feature. Google plans to hold the 'Korea Artificial Intelligence Week 2023' conference for the first time with the Ministry of Science and ICT and promote the Korean language service of 'Bard,' a ChatGPT competitor. They will also give lectures on the theme of 'AI for social good.'

Previously, OpenAI CEO Sam Altman and Brad Smith, Vice Chairman of Microsoft (MS), visited Korea. Last month, CEO Altman held roundtable discussions with domestic AI developers, entrepreneurs, and university students and met with President Yoon Suk-yeol. He also held the 'Worldcoin Meetup Seoul,' a blockchain community gathering, completing a busy two-day schedule. OpenAI was accompanied by key executives, including co-founder Greg Brockman and Brad Lightcap, Chief Operating Officer (COO) in charge of startup fund investments. In April, Vice Chairman Smith visited Korea for the first time in 13 years since 2011. He visited the National Assembly and held private meetings with domestic AI startups. This was to appeal for the need to foster the AI industry while visiting major countries amid AI regulatory movements in Europe and elsewhere.

The reason they are knocking on Korea's door is that Korea is considered a country with high AI technological capabilities. Korea is one of the few countries, along with the United States, China, and Israel, that possesses its own super-large AI models. It is a semiconductor powerhouse essential for expanding the AI ecosystem, and there are also various startups developing AI services. This means there are many places to invest in or collaborate with. During his visit, CEO Altman said, "To meet demand, OpenAI needs Korean semiconductors," and "I want to invest in Korean startups developing using our platform." Korea is also a market with high acceptance of new technologies. Google explained that the reason Bard supports Korean and Japanese before other languages besides English is "to receive more feedback."

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