AI-Collaboration in ROK
South Korea’s major IT companies – SK Telecom, Samsung Electronics, and KaKao – have joined hands to develop AI technologies. The first goal is to develop AI technologies to overcome COVID-19. The players that are leading technology innovations in mobile communication (SK Telecom), smart devices (Samsung Electronics), and a messenger platform (Kakao) will engage in super cooperation. They aim to launch the service in the first half of 2021.
The three companies announced that they signed a partnership for joint AI research to expand the AI ecosystem and formed an AI R&D group for technology fusion and joint development. The group will be joined by the chief technology officers and AI specialist executives of the three companies to jointly develop services. It will be expanded to a global AI alliance in the future by allowing domestic and foreign businesses. AI research directors for the three firms said they would “pool each company’s key capacities to jointly develop future AI technology, research AI usages for resolving social issues, and expand the country’s AI technology base.”
Their first collaboration is an effort to use AI to overcome the COVID-19 pandemic, with a launch planned for the first half of next year. The technology analyzes infection threats for a user’s current position, using it to provide social distancing recommendations or suggest routes to avoid the threats. The companies also plan to apply the technology in other disaster situations such as typhoons and heavy rains. They aim to provide the technology in the form of an application programming interface (API) so that other developers, research institutions, and companies can freely incorporate it into their services.
The AI technologies to overcome the pandemic will be developed as a back-end AI platform. In the form of an application programming interface (API), core functions and technologies will be revealed to the public, including developers, research institutions, and businesses with support for the development of apps and services. The AI technologies will be revealed in the first half of the next year on a website to be jointly run by the three companies.
This is part of a greater trend of cooperation and competition among Korean and overseas IT firms to develop core AI technology for next-generation industries. It signals a wind of change for companies that had previously focused exclusively on their own independent technology development. It was over four years ago in September 2016 that Google, Facebook, Amazon, IBM, Microsoft, and others formed a partnership to conduct in-depth research on AI and establish future technology standards. In South Korea, an industry-academia-research consultative group called “AI One Team” was launched last February by KT, the Hyundai Heavy Industries Group, KAIST, Hanyang University, and the Electronics and Telecommunications Research Institute (ETRI).
Sources
http://www.hani.co.kr/arti/english_edition/e_business/975636.html
http://www.koreaherald.com/view.php?ud=20201222000736