Solving a Social Conundrum through an Alliance of 3 Representative Companies

From the left, Director of the AI ​​Team of Samsung Electronics' Wireless Business Division, Woo Gyeong-gu, Kakao Brain's CEO Park Seung-gi, and CTO Gim Yoon of SKT signed a partnership in an AI joint research and they are taking a commemorative photo.
From the left, Director of the AI ​​Team of Samsung Electronics' Wireless Business Division, Woo Gyeong-gu, Kakao Brain's CEO Park Seung-gi, and CTO Gim Yoon of SKT signed a partnership in an AI joint research and they are taking a commemorative photo.

3 representative Korean ICT companies, SKT, Samsung Electronics, and Kakao (hereinafter 3 companies), have joined together through an AI cooperation to contribute to social safety.On the 22nd, the three companies announced that they have agreed to cooperate with the development of AI technology in the Pandemic era. Through this alliance of AI, the companies announced that they will jointly promote the development of future AI technology, research on use of AI to solve social conundrum, and expand the base of AI technologies by gathering the core competencies of each company. In particular, considering the crucial time that COVID-19 is impacting seriously on the national economy and society, they decided to preferentially proceed the cooperation by focusing on the early overcoming of the corona and the development of AI for public benefit. To this end, the three companies formed the 'AI R&D Organization', and each company's CTO (Chief Technology Officer) or AI professional executive grades attended to promote joint development and the companies are going to consider expanding the scale to the level of global AI alliance as well as the inclusion of participation of other domestic operators.

“We Can Create the Best AI in the World Together” Alliance of No. 1 in Each Area

The cooperation of 3 companies was initiated at CES2020 in Las Vegas, USA in January, and SKT CEO Park Jeong-ho said to Korean ICT companies such as Samsung Electronics, “It is a time when Korea needs cooperation rather than competition between domestic companies to take the lead in the global AI war." It started by emphasizing the need for cooperation. SKT, Samsung Electronics, and Kakao have developed AI technology for many years based on their each strength such as mobile communication service, smart device, and messenger platform, and they decided to combine these capabilities can raise domestic AI technology to the world's best level within a short period of time, and after that the cooperation proceeded in unison. Accordingly, a joint working group was formed in March, and a CTO-level workshop was regularly operated on a biweekly basis, and the working planning/development team held online meetings frequently to discuss key tasks of the cooperation and discuss specific development directions.

The First Joint Product of the 3 Companies' AI Alliance is 'AI for overcoming Pandemic', the Core Technologies and Functions were opened

The first joint work that the 3 companies will unveil in the first half of 2021 is “AI for Overcoming Pandemic.” This AI can identify the COVID-19 related risk around the current location in real time and analyze the risk to recommend social distancing to users or guide detour routes, and it can be applied to disasters such as typhoons and heavy rains in the future. Within a large category, it can be seen as a notification of disaster, but it is different from the existing notification of disaster, which mainly informs the occurrence that AI predicts, but it predicts the risk of the user's surroundings and the future movement path, and warns in advance, and provides personalized information.

'AI for Overcoming Pandemic' elaborates regional risk through big data of floating population, public information about disasters, and information on SNS, and it provides predictive information to users, based on data such as schedules recorded on smart phones, flight tickets·reservation information of performances·accommodation, and normal travel routes. In addition, by applying general-purpose artificial intelligence technology including a large Korean language model to the 'AI for Overcoming Pandemic', the artificial intelligence is expected to be developed to analyze the news and summarize and deliver the information that users want, or accurately understand various requests about disaster-related information to generate appropriate answers.

Rather than creating a separate service with 'AI for Overcoming Pandemic', the 3 companies are developing 'Backend AI Platform', and core functions and technologies are going to be opened to the developers·research institutes, and companies in the form of API (Application Programming Interface), and it will be released in the first half of 2021 on a separate site that co-operated by the 3 companies in a form that supporting app/service development.

Solving Social Conundrum such as Aging besides COVID-19· Cooperation on Joint Development of AI services, etc.

3 The companies decided to continue cooperation in AI research to solve social problems such as social aging and fine dust, etc, starting with 'AI for Overcoming Pandemic'. They are in a position that the possibility of cooperation is open in all areas of ICT, such as converging various capabilities and business areas of each company such as 5G, smart phone, AI, and messenger platforms. The 3 companies also spoke that if there is an ICT company that wants to cooperate and join the alliance, they will be able to work together with an open mind.

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