Bae Kyung-hoon:

As the possibility of reorganizing the government’s National AI Foundation Model project, known as Dokpamo, and shifting to a support system centered on Frontier AI have recently been discussed, the government said it would continue to run the existing Dokpamo project in parallel while expanding the ways it provides support and broadening its goals. The government said it would carry Dokpamo’s next stage into the field while also widening the scope and direction of its support system.

Bae Kyung-hoon, deputy prime minister and minister of science and ICT, said he was committed to continuing to push ahead with the Dokpamo project. He also presented a plan to challenge Frontier AI at the national level, aiming to develop a world-leading model.

Bae Kyung-hoon posted on Facebook late on the 29th. The post was titled, "South Korea's Dokpamo Continues," and in it he said that Dokpamo would be continued and that South Korea also needed to challenge Frontier AI at the same time.

Bae Kyung-hoon attended the "Meeting with Operators for the Everyone's AI Project" on the 4th. The photo from the meeting was provided by the Ministry of Science and ICT.

While assessing the rapid growth of domestic AI models over the past year, Bae said that beyond model performance, actual use would be an important standard going forward. He said performance competition alone would not be enough, and that whether a model is actually adopted in the field is more important.

As the basis for that view, Bae said many fields are using Chinese open-weight models. He added that domestic models need to secure real-world competitiveness, and said Dokpamo’s next goal is not further improving benchmark scores but building an AI that is chosen in the field.

Bae said he would finish Dokpamo Phase 3 as currently planned, while also hinting at possible changes to the way support is provided. He explained that in the early stages of the project, GPU shortages meant limited resources had to be concentrated on a small number of companies, but that as government and private-sector GPU investment expands, support should be broadened to more recipients.

Bae then said it is necessary to consider ways to foster more possibilities rather than selecting those to be left out. He also argued that Dokpamo and startups and small and medium-sized enterprises developing specialized AI should be given sufficient computing resources and opportunities to grow.

With industry attention focused on Frontier AI development, the government plans to push ahead with Frontier AI development at the national level. It aims to develop world-leading models through a structure in which large companies, startups, universities, and researchers participate together, and plans to foster them as national strategic assets.

Bae said he sees Frontier AI as the axis for breaking through South Korea's technological limits, and Dokpamo as the axis for AI use across South Korean industry and society. He also said Frontier AI and Dokpamo are not mutually exclusive, and that the country needs to pursue both the challenge of aiming higher and the task of building a broader ecosystem.

Bae then said Dokpamo would continue, and presented a direction for its evolution that includes more companies taking on the challenge, expanded use in the field, and a path to growth into larger companies. He also outlined a flow in which, on the basis of Dokpamo, South Korea would challenge a world-leading Frontier AI under the country's own name.

Source: IT DAILY · Yang Seung-gap
Original: https://www.itdaily.kr/news/articleView.html?idxno=241903

References

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