As the competition for artificial intelligence (AI) dominance expands to securing Artificial General Intelligence (AGI) technology, the South Korean government has also embarked on a feasibility study for independent AI technology development.
According to relevant departments on the 5th, the Information and Communication Technology Planning and Evaluation Institute (IITP) under the Ministry of Science and ICT is expected to start the AGI technology development feasibility study this month. The plan is to conduct feasibility analysis and develop response strategies by November.
This project will serve to demonstrate the feasibility of the government’s AGI “core technology development” initiative. Last year, the government announced the “AI-Semiconductor Initiative” in conjunction with relevant ministries and officially confirmed the advancement of large-scale research and development (R&D) to secure AGI technology.
The IITP plans to focus on analyzing the technical and economic feasibility of AGI and deriving policy directions that consider the connection with the domestic AI ecosystem and industry.
Once the feasibility study is completed, the government’s AGI research and development is expected to intensify. Through this, South Korea is anticipated to secure independent general-purpose artificial intelligence technology and concentrate on enhancing its competitiveness in the global AI market.
The goal of the government’s AGI development project is to develop technology at the AGI level 2 or higher that can learn and think like a human. AGI level 2 includes capabilities such as ▲ surpassing human performance in the real world ▲ generalizing knowledge across multiple domains ▲ collaborating with AI and humans ▲ autonomously generating new tools ▲ accurately following user preferences.
The AGI competition is accelerating worldwide. The United States has announced the ‘Stargate Project’ with a scale of $500 billion (approximately 728 trillion won) for AGI development. Sam Altman, CEO of OpenAI, predicted in January that the company’s ultimate goal of AGI would be developed during Trump’s next term.
China is shaking up the global AI market with a low-cost, high-efficiency AI model developed by the startup DeepSeek. DeepSeek has successfully implemented high performance with lower operational costs compared to existing AI by utilizing “Mixture of Experts (MoE)” and “Sparse Attention” technologies. Liang Yuanpeng, founder of DeepSeek, noted, “Developing AGI is our ultimate goal, and we will continue research in a way that maximizes resource efficiency.”