'K-AI' Sovereign AI Project to Be Integrated into Frontier AI Development

[Financial News] The government is shifting the focus of its 'national flagship AI' strategy from the sovereign AI foundation model project to the development of world-class frontier AI. Its plan is to combine next year's KRW 5 trillion budget for frontier AI development with the technology and personnel from the existing sovereign AI project, concentrating policy resources on securing AI capabilities that can compete with the United States and China.
According to Financial News reporting on the 28th, the government has settled on integrating its previously separate sovereign AI development policy into its frontier AI development program. Rather than pursuing sovereign AI and frontier AI development on two separate tracks, it is considering a plan to complete the third sovereign AI evaluation at the end of this year and carry the selected companies and accumulated technological capabilities into the frontier AI program.

While the sovereign AI project focused on developing lightweight models to drive AI transformation (AX) across South Korea's industrial ecosystem, the frontier AI strategy aims to secure models of sufficient scale to compete head-on with the world's leading AI systems, including those developed by Anthropic and OpenAI. 
MSIT is reportedly considering a plan to complete the third sovereign AI evaluation scheduled for the end of this year and then integrate the selected companies and their technological capabilities into the frontier AI development program. 
The government is reportedly reviewing several options for developing frontier AI models, including joint development through the establishment of a special-purpose corporation (SPC) and an approach led by companies selected for the sovereign AI project.
An MSIT official explained, "We have broadly settled on a plan to integrate the sovereign AI development policy into frontier AI and concentrate the budget and technology," adding, "Whether to establish an SPC has not yet been decided." 
Bae Kyung-hoon, deputy prime minister and minister of Science and ICT, has repeatedly stressed the need for the government to concentrate its policy capabilities on frontier AI development. At a press conference marking his first anniversary in office last July, Bae said, "We are entering an era in which the United States and China are trying to control high-performance AI like nuclear weapons," and emphasized the need to develop frontier AI, stating, "If we do not have AI capabilities of our own, we will be unable to respond even if foreign AI services suddenly stop operating one day or their prices rise 100-fold." 
[email protected] Lee Gu-soon Reporter