S.Korea plans to make digital platform gov't based on large-scale AI

South Korean government is pursuing various measures to nurture talent as a way to secure national competitiveness in the AI industry as represented by ChatGPT, a large-scale generative AI, aiming to become the world's number one in specialized AI and Korean language AI platforms.

The plan is to establish a private sector-led, government-supported large-scale AI collaboration ecosystem to enhance AI application services in fields such as healthcare, law and counseling, and to foster 10,000 software-as-a-service (SaaS) companies, the core of the AI ecosystem, by 2026.

The Ministry of Science and ICT announced on Friday a plan to strengthen the competitiveness of large-scale AI. 

It includes the expansion of high-quality text data necessary for large-scale AI development. By 2027, the government, in cooperation with the private sector, will build 200 types of specialized learning data and language data for non-English-speaking markets (equivalent to 150,000 books). It will also prepare 130 types of high-quality text corpus for Korean language performance improvement and Korean language application.

To increase AI professionals and strengthen their capabilities, the government will educate and nurture 65,000 talents in university AI specialized programs, such as master's and doctoral courses, from this year to 2027. Additionally, it will teach 1 million citizens how to use large-scale AI during the same period.

Write to Jin-Won Kim at jin1@hankyung.com