Korea Inc. to invest W65tr in AI in 4 years

President Yoon Suk Yeol salutes to the national flag as he presided over the inaugural meeting of Presidential Committee on AI held at Four Seasons Hotel in Seoul Thursday. (Yonhap)

President Yoon Suk Yeol on Thursday pledged to ramp up his administration's push to enhance the country's artificial intelligence capabilities through the creation of Presidential Committee on AI, as South Korea's private-sector tech companies also vowed to invest 65 trillion won ($49 billion) in AI-related projects through 2027.

Companies investing in the upcoming AI projects will likely get tax benefits in return, according to Yoon's office.

South Korea will also work to set up two national AI computing centers as public-private partnerships through its 2 trillion-won project to enhance the nation's supercomputing infrastructure.

Each computing center will have plenty of graphic processing units and neural processing units as well as data centers for them, according to the presidential office. The project will allow South Korea's supercomputing capacity for AI to increase 15-fold as the two facilities combined will handle 2 billion billion (exaflops) operations per second.

These moves, along with deregulations to expedite AI innovations, will "stimulate AI transition" in South Korea's industry and society, while boosting private sector investment in AI, Yoon said.

"The National AI Computing Center will serve as a backbone of research and development in the field of AI and a key infrastructure for the growth of (AI) industry," Yoon told some 50 participants at the inaugural ceremony of the Presidential Committee on AI held at Four Seasons Hotel in Seoul on Thursday.

Spurred by the efforts, the public- and private-sector entities will gather strength to put South Korea in the global top three spots in terms of national AI capabilities by 2027, Yoon said.

"The world's AI experts regard the United States, China, Singapore, France, the United Kingdom and South Korea as the global AI powerhouses. If we push ourselves harder, clinching one of the top three spots is not an impossible mission," Yoon said.

Park Sang-ook, senior presidential secretary for science and technology, speaks during a briefing held on Thursday at the presidential office in Seoul. Park is one of the members of the Presidential Committee on AI. (Yonhap)

The new committee, chaired by Yoon, will be devoted to establishing national policies related to artificial intelligence and presenting the national AI blueprint. The committee kicked off as announced in April, when the government vowed to spend over 710 billion won this year to promote the use of AI technologies in Asia's fourth-largest economy.

Yoon at the event venue appointed Taejae University President Yeom Jae-ho as the vice chair of the new presidential committee.

Today's ceremony marks Yoon's latest push to advance South Korea's national AI capabilities, as Yoon has moved to address the digital divide since his inauguration in May 2022. Yoon has also repeated his pledge to tackle threats to liberal democracy posed by the abuse of these technologies such as human rights violations through fake news and deepfake technology.

Yoon laid out his "New York Initiative" in September 2022, aimed at preserving universal values like freedom through digital innovation. In September 2023, he announced a "Digital Bill of Rights" at the United Nations General Assembly as his manifesto for a new, universal digital order.

By Son Ji-hyoung(consnow@heraldcorp.com)