SK Telecom announced its strong will to open a new turning point in Korea's AI technology through the launch ceremony of the Ministry of Science and ICT's independent AI foundation model project.
On the afternoon of the 9th, the launch ceremony for the independent AI foundation model project was held at the Le Meridien Seoul Hotel in Myeongdong, Seoul, with the attendance of key officials including Minister of Science and ICT Bae Kyung-hoon, President of the National IT Industry Promotion Agency (NIPA) Park Yoon-gyu, and representatives of the five elite teams participating in the project.
At this event, SK Telecom CEO Yoo Young-sang, in his speech as the head of the elite team, expressed his ambition to develop a top-level AI foundation model for AI in the daily lives of citizens with a sense of mission as a national AI company.
He also said that it is a very challenging task to create the highest level of AI with limited time and resources, but achieving SOTA State Of The Art, the most innovative and advanced AI model in the field, is an essential goal for technological independence and there is no time to delay, and added that their goal is to implement a model close to the open source SOTA level from the first stage evaluation within this year.
The first stage evaluation, tentatively scheduled for the end of this year, will be a multi-faceted stage evaluation that includes evaluation by citizens and experts, verification evaluation based on benchmarks linked to AI safety, and evaluation of the number of derived AI models.
As the phased evaluation continues, SKT's elite team anticipates that not only simple benchmark performance but also the perceived performance from the perspective of actual users will become more important, and that the social and economic ripple effects of AI, improved accessibility, and practical usability will become more important, so they plan to prepare in a three-dimensional manner.
In addition, based on the experience of developing a Korean AI model in-house since 2019 and the voices of customers gathered through commercializing A., an AI agent used by 10 million customers, the company is determined to create a model with excellent user convenience and usability.
Together with the elite team members Krafton, 42dot, Rebellion, Liner, and Selectstar, SK Telecom plans to comprehensively demonstrate full-stack capabilities across the entire AI value chain, from AI model design to semiconductors, data processing, algorithm optimization, and multimodality.
In addition, leading domestic and international scholars, including researchers at Seoul National University (Professor Kim Geon-hee, Professor Yoon Seong-ro, Professor Hwang Seung-won, and Professor Do Jae-young), KAIST researchers (Professor Lee Ki-min), and the University of Wisconsin-Madison researchers (Professor Lee Kang-wook and Professor Dimitris Papailiopoulos), are conducting research on core technologies.
The project's core goal is to develop a next-generation AI model that achieves world-class Korean language processing capabilities while also offering multilingual support and multimodal capabilities. Specifically, the strategy aims to secure a differentiated competitive edge not only in the domestic but also global AI market by implementing AI technologies that enable a deep understanding of Korean cultural context and sentiment.
Yoo Young-sang, CEO
Through this project, we will go beyond simple model development and lead to an innovative leap forward for the entire AI ecosystem in Korea. It is a very challenging task to create the highest level of AI with limited time and resources, but achieving SOTA State Of The Art, the most innovative and advanced AI model in the field, is an essential goal for technological independence and there is no time to delay. Our goal is to implement a model close to the open source SOTA level from the first stage evaluation within this year
