KT has launched an industry-academy alliance to nurture talent and develop new business opportunities in the areas of artificial intelligence, joining a growing trend of the private sector building a multi-party ecosystem to stay ahead in the global race for dominance in this disruptive technology.

The leading Korean telco said on Thursday it signed a joint memorandum of understanding to form the alliance dubbed "AI One Team" in partnership with Hyundai Heavy Industries Holding, Korea Advanced Institute of Science and Technology (KAIST), Hanyang University, and Korea Electronics and Telecommunications Research Institute (ETRI). The signing ceremony held at KAIST in Daejeon was attended by KT’s new CEO Koo Hyun-mo, Hyundai Heavy Industries Holdings Vice President Chung Ki-sun, KAIST President Shin Sung-chul, Hanyang University President Kim Woo-seung, ETRI President Kim Myung-joon and Second Vice Minister of Science, Technology, Information, and Communication Chang Suk-young.

The companies and universities will participate in a consultative body where they will introduce a human resources development platform, discover and share new AI-based business opportunities, create, create an AI open ecosystem and establish an alliance secretariat.

The alliance’s priority is to introduce an AI training platform to allow small enterprises or students to learn, understand and experiment with AI technology by accessing high-performance GPU-based computing assets and learning programs. They will also run a professional course to raise the quality of AI specialists, who will be later placed at various companies. New AI-based services for different industrial sites will also be explored under a joint project named AI+X. Hyundai Heavy Industries Holding will share its success with small companies and startups in its journey to 5G-based digital transformation that has been jointly conducted with KT since last year.

The AI open ecosystem is designed to share AI applications and useful data from the alliance with startups and small and medium enterprises for joint research. The AI One Team secretariat will be in KT`s headquarters building.

KT’s new head Koo has long emphasized that AI should be internalized companywide beyond KT`s products and services, creating a new AI-DX convergence division responsible for AI technology development right after his appointment as CEO.

By Lim Young-sin and Minu Kim

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