On the 2nd, according to the industry, SK Telecom has reportedly tapped Jeong Seok-geun, head of the artificial intelligence (AI) CIC, as the new chief technology officer (CTO). Jeong, a key talent who has led SK Telecom's independent AI foundation model project, rose to co-head of the organization that consolidated AI capabilities at the end of Oct. last year and will now oversee future technologies across the board.
The biggest task is advancing the large-scale AI model "A.X K1 (Aidot X K1)." A.X K1, a domestic model with 519 billion parameters, has advanced to the second-round evaluation alongside LG AI Research "K-Exaone" and Upstage "Solar Open." SK Telecom plans to begin with image data, then sequentially apply multimodality, and expand to process voice and video after the second half of the year. Group affiliates such as SK hynix, SK Innovation, SK AX, and SK Broadband, as well as some 20 institutions including the Korea Foundation for Advanced Studies and the Chey Institute for Advanced Studies, will also begin using the model in phases.
Establishing AI data centers is another major pillar Jeong will oversee. SK Telecom is working with Amazon Web Services (AWS) to promote the Ulsan AI data center with the goal of becoming a Northeast Asia AI hub, and is also pushing to build a data center in the southwest region with OpenAI. Given the AI infrastructure's need for massive power, designs that boost efficiency through next-generation cooling and power technologies are seen as critical.