Information Technology | Artificial Intelligence » Jeong Eun Ha - Artificial Intelligence Industry in South Korea

Source: http://www.doksinet Artificial Intelligence industry in South Korea Jeong Eun Ha, Officer for Innovation, Technology and Science, March 22, 2016 Introduction Se-dol Lee, one of the world top Go players, recently had a historical match with Google’s Alpha Go Artificial Intelligence (AI) in Seoul. The result was 4 to 1 which technology has won over humanity This incident has given Korea a big shock as beforehand most Koreans were confident that Lee would win. After this match, the Korean government has learned a lesson that the AI will be one of the major industries that will lead the global market. They have started to invest in AI more strategically and efficiently. Korea’s AI market While the United States, Europe and Japan are investing a lot of money in AI development, not much research has been done in Korea apart from its reputation of an IT powerhouse. Korea’s market size in 2013 was approximately 2.78 billion euro and is expected to grow up to 494 billion euro in

2017 Some of the large IT companies are investing in the AI, but this is still limited to some of the internet portal or game related companies. For instance, NC Soft (a Korean large game company) and NAVER (a Korean internet portal company) have been researching and developing the AI for several years. In 2015, Samsung Electronics acquired an AI startup called Vicarious and invested AI robot startup called Jibo. This indicates that Samsung Electronics are also planning to do business in AI industry. In addition, Samsung has collaborated with Wolfram Alpha to provide S Voice service for English speaking countries. On the other hand, the Ministry of Science, ICT and Future Planning (MSIP) has been investing in Exobrain software development from 2013. This software provides knowledge reinforcement learning service by accumulating and self-learning the big data information. The government will push to have a knowledge contest that has a human competing against a robot in October. This

competition is going to be a scholarship quiz and Exobrain will compete against the Korean students. The contest will be a test to reach its first step of goal of securing original technologies. This investment will last for 10 years with the amount of 83 million euro. However, the amount of investment is insufficient compared to that of the United States (invested 2.68 billion euro), Europe (invested 1 billion euro) and Japan (invested 794 million euro). Reasons for the delay of the development As Forbes mentioned in 2014, AI adds an intelligence layer to big data to tackle complex analytical tasks much faster than humans could ever hope to. Development of AI has a close relationship with the big data as it is the source for knowledge processing. However, there are several reasons why Korea could not develop in this industry. First, the main issue is the act on the protection of personal information. Companies are prohibited to use personal information of customers without their

permission. Large companies are raising their voice to ease the regulations as they claim that this law hinders the development of AI and big data industry. The MSIP and 6 other ministries are going to listen to the voice of the companies and will try to change the regulation according to its will. Source: http://www.doksinet Other than the regulation issues, companies claim that they do not have big data which could be utilized for the development of AI; their companies are not large enough to analyze the big data and there is no work that needs AI solutions. Also the CEO/CIO is ignorant in the investment of AI and big data, there is distrust in the effectiveness of introducing the big data in the company and there is no specialist who knows what big data and AI is. Korean government establishing a control tower for AI In March 2016, President Geun Hye Park invited 20 specialists in AI and software industries to the Blue House to hold a Government-Business joint conference on

Intelligence Information Society. President Park announced that they will form a control tower of AI which will be called Science and Technology Strategy Committee. This control tower will aim to foster the AI projects and funding plans The MSIP will lead the task force team and will plan a tentative roadmap by April which will be reported to President Park. This plan will be invested about 768 million euro for next 5 years (2016 ~2020) It will be used for funding R&D, employing specialists, investing data infrastructure and fostering the convergent industry. Additional 19 billion euro will be invested by the private sectors such as Samsung Electronics, LG Electronics, SK Telecom, KT, NAVER and Hyundai Motors. President Park has encouraged the companies to establish a joint research lab for the development of AI industry. This research lab will focus on five different fields of intelligence software as shown in the below image. The development of language intelligence will be used

for providing legal expert service, the visual intelligence will be used for prevention of terrorism and city crime, the space intelligence will be applied to Drone lifeguard support, the emotion intelligence will be used for elderly helper robot and summary & creation will be used for automatic contents summary service. For this flagship project, each company will invest 2.3 million euro to establish the research lab and will employ 50 researchers in the initial stage Sector Proof of Technology Effectiveness in real life application Language Intelligence World #1 in knowledge accumulation (by ‘19) Law structure cost reduction Visual Intelligence Win #1 at ImageNet (by ‘19) Percentage of crime reduction Space Intelligence Demonstration of Disaster relief (by ‘19) Lifesaving within golden time Emotion Intelligence Demonstration of human interactive conversation (by ‘19) Prevent death of senior citizens who live alone Summary & Creation Contest of

summarize movie (by ’20) Increase contents consumption level Source: http://www.doksinet Source Conversation, J. T (2016, March 18) Googles historic win over Go world champion proves AI can be unpredictable and immoral leading expert warns. Retrieved March 23, 2016, from http://www.dailymailcouk/sciencetech/article-3499288/Google-s-historic-win-world-champion-proves-AIunpredictable-immoral-leading-expert-warnshtml Kwon, O. (2016, February 11) Era of Big data Retrieved March 23, 2016, from http://www.hanicokr/arti/economy/economy general/729868html Lee, E. (2016, March 08) Domestic big data market status Retrieved March 23, 2016, from http://www.kiddcokr/news/184400 Maycotte, H. O (2014, December 16) Why Big Data and AI Need Each Other -- and You Need them Both. Retrieved March 23, 2016, from http://wwwforbescom/sites/homaycotte/2014/12/16/why-big-dataand-ai-need-each-other-and-you-need-them-both/#31ae1a92dc80 M. (2016, March 17) The government will develop Korean AI by investing

1trillion KRW Retrieved March 23, 2016, from http://blog.presidentgokr/?p=61415 Lee, J. (2016, March 14) Korea considers control tower for AI push Retrieved March 23, 2016, from http://www.koreaheraldcom/viewphp?ud=20160314000839 Lee, H. (2014) Technology trends of AI for big data knowledge processing Electronics and Telecommunications Trends, 30-38. Retrieved March 23, 2016 Jeong, W., & Jeon, H (2016) Current status of domestic AI industry VIP Report, 646(16), 8th ser, 1-10 Retrieved March 23, 2016. Park, S. (2016, March 18) Quiz Battle between a Human and South Korean Artificial Intelligence to Take Place in October. Retrieved March 24, 2016, from http://englishetnewscom/20160318200003