The government has begun to flesh out the president's pledge for "AI for all." The plan is to raise accessibility so anyone can use AI in daily life and to expand education and hands-on opportunities to lift overall AI use capabilities.
Bae Kyung-hoon, Deputy Prime Minister and Minister of the Ministry of Science and ICT, reviewed and approved the "plan to strengthen AI use capabilities and make AI part of daily life" at the 5th meeting of ministers related to science and technology on the 11th.
First, the government plans to broaden the foundation for using the government-supported independent AI foundation model project so people can use it on AI and information technology (IT) platforms and services they use every day. For corporations that provide related APIs, the government will support graphics processing unit (GPU) resources it has secured starting in the first half of the year. The aim is to lower the barrier to using AI models with proven performance.
The AI education base will also be expanded. The Ministry of Science and ICT will build an integrated online education platform, "Our AI Learning," by June, and will run nationwide on-site AI education that uses everyday spaces such as big-box retailers, community child centers, and senior centers.
Also starting this month, the government will run a year-round "national AI competition" open to all generations and will set up an online "AI lab for all" where people can practice AI without separate coding knowledge. It also plans to create regional offline AI practice spaces.
Customized education programs will also run in parallel for students, the general public, and the digitally vulnerable. Through this, the government set a goal to provide AI education to a total of 33 million people by 2030.
The national AI competition will include a call for AI use cases, an AI quiz contest, an AI creation contest and a Robotics challenge for elementary, middle, and high school students, an AI rookie competition for university students, an AI champions competition centered on research teams, and a national happiness AI competition for the digitally vulnerable. Through this competition, the government plans to broaden the public's hands-on experience with AI and raise overall AI literacy.
Linkages with existing private and public events will also be promoted. KT's "K-AI content contest," Kakao's "AI Top 100," and the Ministry of National Defense's "defense AI competition (MAICON)" will be included as linked events.
The national AI competition will officially run from next month through November, starting with an opening ceremony on the 26th of this month. Outstanding results will be awarded at the year-end AI festival, with total prize money of 3 billion won.
The government will also work on responses to side effects that may arise as AI spreads. It will establish "AI ethics principles" as a standard for AI use and operate a "youth AI mental health research team" to reduce adverse effects such as AI overdependence.
Meanwhile, the meeting also presented a plan to transition the public sector to the cloud. The government set a goal to make the current 42.4% cloud transition in the public sector universal by 2030 and decided to first review applying private-sector cloud services.
To that end, it will prepare a step-by-step cloud transition roadmap through 2030 within the year and conduct a "Cloud-Native" adequacy review to determine whether to apply cloud technologies from the design stage for grade 1 and 2 core information systems. Based on this, it will also select systems for priority application.
The government will also revise regulations and security certification systems that hinder the expansion of private cloud use and will update related guidelines so that whether to apply Cloud-Native is reviewed from the budget planning stage.