Gov't to reveal policy measure for hyperscale AI industry

Lee Jong-ho, minister of the Ministry of Science and ICT, speaks during a national AI strategy meeting in Pangyo, Gyeonggi Province, Wednesday. Yonhap

Korea goes all-out to support development of AI business

By Baek Byung-yeul

The government will announce its policy measure regarding the hyperscale in the artificial intelligence (AI) industry sometime this March. This is all part of its efforts to improve the nation's abilities concerning the rapidly emerging field, which gained global attention with the rise of the generative AI service ChatGPT, the ICT minister said Wednesday.

The purpose of creating these policies is to increase Korea's competitiveness in the AI sector by drawing together the capabilities of the government and private companies. To this end, the policy measure is expected to include flexible regulations for the spread of hyperscale AI and social and technological measures that can improve the reliability of AI services.

“Since OpenAI launched ChatGPT in November, the number of users surpassed the 100 million mark in less than three months, with many now calling it a game changer in the AI era. However, ChatGPT is nothing new as it is a result of learning hyperscale AI models through large-scale data and computing power,” Lee Jong-ho, minister of the Ministry of Science and ICT, said during a meeting for the nation's AI strategy with government officials and executives from private companies in Pangyo, where tech firms are located.

The minister said the emergence of such services is not much different from the attempts made by the government to increase its capabilities in digital technology, saying “we will announce the direction of the policy measures regarding the hyperscale AI industry within March.”

“Hyperscale AI has become the basis for enhancing Korea's competitiveness in areas closely related to data gathering, sharing computing resources, R&D in AI and securing ethics and reliability in AI services,” Lee said.

The meeting featured policymakers and executives from IT companies including Koh Jean, chairman of the Presidential Committee on the Digital Platform Government, Ko Hak-soo, chairman of the Personal Information Protection Commission, Baek Sang-yeop, CEO of Kakao Enterprise.

“The Personal Information Protection Commission will support safe data utilization for the development of the hyperscale AI industry by revising the Personal Information Protection Act, while minimizing privacy infringement factors,” Ko said.

Koh Jean said the Presidential Committee on the Digital Platform Government will “introduce hyperscale AI technology as a solution to economic and social problems to solve pending issues such as social welfare, natural disaster and civil complaints.”

Kakao Enterprise's CEO also introduced its generative AI service KoGPT, which will be officially launched within the first half of this year as well as its AI-based image generator Karlo.

During the meeting, the participants discussed how to improve the country's capability in the hyperscale AI industry and its impact on various sectors of society such as education, healthcare and public services. They also talked about the need for regulatory improvements and technical and social considerations to secure ethics and the reliability of AI services.