KT Partners with Korea University to Strengthen Independent AI Competitiveness

[Financial News] KT announced on the 17th that it held a workshop to share the results of joint research in the field of Artificial Intelligence Communication Technology (AICT) with Korea University and to promote practical commercialization.
At the workshop, key executives including Oh Seung-pil, Vice President of KT's Technology Innovation Division, and Bae Soon-min, Head of AI Future Lab, as well as Yoon Sung-taek, Vice President of Research at Korea University, and Kim Jeong-hyeon, Dean of the College of Information, attended. A total of over 200 people, including professors and researchers from both institutions who have been conducting 15 joint projects for over a year, participated online and offline.
The event was organized based on the agreement to establish the 'AICT Joint Research Center' signed by KT and Korea University in July last year. After the presentation of research results aimed at utilizing them in actual business beyond basic technology research and acquisition, a communication session was held to share insights among participants along with in-depth discussions on each project.
The industry-academia joint research between KT and Korea University focused on developing technology that can be practically used in business rather than long-term research with a perspective of 2-3 years to respond to the rapidly accelerating AI innovation. The aim is to not only secure advanced technology but also to apply it to actual industrial sites to create results and quickly spread them.
Through this joint research with Korea University, KT discovered and carried out a total of 15 research projects centered on the latest AI technology and technology based on KT's internal demand. The main research areas consisted of Korean AI, AI models, agentic AI, vertical small language models (sLM), data, cost-effective AI, cloud, and security.
Researchers who participated in the projects produced practical research results from three stages: 'technology acquisition', 'business planning', and 'business application' according to the nature, utilization plan, and purpose of each project. Meaningful projects were derived in the technology acquisition stage, where technology applicable to business is developed and verified, and in the business planning stage, where core technology that can be applied to services and solutions provided by KT is secured.
In particular, four projects applied to KT's self-developed Mi:um 2.0, △ 'Korean sLM and Large Language Model (LLM) evaluation index research and benchmark set development' △ 'Korean vertical sLM technology development' applied to KT's legal specialized model △ 'KT customer service app usability research and AI user experience (UX) improvement' project applied to KT's internal search portal △ 'Research on rational sovereign cloud policy implementation plan' applied to KT's Secure Public Cloud (SPC) will continue to be used for the advancement of KT's B2B and B2C services at the business application stage.
Based on the results of this joint research, KT is accelerating the advancement of its independently developed LLM model, Mi:um 2.0. It will also participate in the 'Independent AI Foundation Model Project' being promoted at the national level by utilizing the technology secured through this joint research. In addition, KT plans to enhance the practical competitiveness of Korean AI by forming an elite joint research group with major domestic institutions, including Korea University.
Meanwhile, KT and Korea University will promote the second-year joint research project from next month. They plan to continue solid cooperation to strengthen core technological capabilities in the AICT field, such as the development of Korean AI foundation model technology.
mkchang@fnnews.com Jang Min-kwon Reporter