Gov’t to conduct 1st evaluation of national AI foundation model project in January

The Ministry of Science and ICT will carry out the first round of evaluations for the state-led project to develop homegrown artificial intelligence (AI) foundation models in January. The ministry notified the participating consortia on Thursday that performance assessments to eliminate one of the five teams will take place from Jan. 1 to 15. In August, the ministry selected five consortia led by Naver Cloud, Upstage, SK Telecom, NC AI and LG AI Research to locally develop foundation models, investing around 200 billion won ($136 million) to cover costs for high-performance GPUs, datasets and R&D personnel. Every six months, the government will eliminate one of the teams after evaluation, narrowing the field to two finalists by the first half of 2027. The upcoming January assessment will determine the first team to be eliminated. The evaluation was initially slated for December but was pushed back to accommodate delays from issues running graphics processing units (GPUs). Some of the participating companies reportedly faced problems getting the GPUs provided by SK Telecom and Naver CloudWeiter zum vollständigen Artikel bei Korea Times Weiter zum vollständigen Artikel bei Korea Times