"Requirements for an AI Industrial Powerhouse: Agents and Ontology" [One Year After the Kkanbu Meeting (4) - Final]

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Former Minister of SMEs and Startups Park Youngsun. Photo by Heo Younghan, younghan@

"The key is to start by assigning easier tasks to AI agents, thoroughly assess the results, and then gradually expand their use."

Former Minister of SMEs and Startups Park Young-sun, known as a "semiconductor evangelist" and chair of the Strategic Economic Advisory Group at the Ministry of Economy and Finance, identified the widespread adoption of AI agents as a key task for South Korea to become an industrial powerhouse in the age of artificial intelligence (AI). She said that small and medium-sized enterprises, as well as large companies, should use AI agents to innovate their work and drive the AI transformation (AX) of industries as a whole.

She also noted that although last year's "Kkanbu meeting" raised the international standing of South Korea's AI industry and the value of high-bandwidth memory (HBM), the public and the industry had not been given a sufficient understanding of how the planned supply of 260,000 graphics processing units (GPUs) would bring about change.

Park made these remarks in a written interview with this publication marking one year since the "Kkanbu meeting" between Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang and the heads of South Korean companies.

AI agents are systems that go beyond answering questions to perform multiple tasks in pursuit of a given goal. Park suggested that companies start by assigning simpler tasks to AI agents, verify the results, and gradually expand the scope of their use.

She also stressed the need for organizational innovation to maximize the effectiveness of AI agents. "If companies use AI agents while keeping their hierarchical reporting systems unchanged, people become bottlenecks," Park said, advising that "organizations need to shift to a more horizontal structure." Her point was that maintaining existing, complex reporting and approval procedures would limit the productivity gains from adopting AI.

She identified the infrastructure for using industrial data as another important task. Park proposed upgrading KAMP, the AI manufacturing data platform advanced during her tenure, using an ontology-based approach. Ontology is a technology that structures data so AI can understand its meaning and relationships.

"Creating foundational data for each industry would greatly help small and medium-sized enterprises," she said. However, she stressed that data containing a company's proprietary know-how should be managed on-premises and used to develop AI tailored to each company. In other words, common data for each industry should be developed collaboratively, while information about a company's core technologies should remain under its internal control.

She urged the government to adopt policies that allow the public to experience the convenience of AI agents. Park said that, through her work with the Strategic Economic Advisory Group, she had proposed a "National Economy Secretary Agent" to assist with the work of the Public Procurement Service and the National Tax Service. She said the government had indicated it would begin with the Public Procurement Service and include funding in the 2027 budget, adding that the service should also be expanded to provide tax guidance.

While viewing expanded cooperation with Nvidia positively, she cautioned against dependence on any single company. "South Korea cannot become a leader in the AI era over the long term if it becomes dependent on the Nvidia ecosystem," Park said. "It is important to work with Nvidia while also establishing the distinctiveness of South Korea's AI ecosystem and securing areas where it is irreplaceable."

This content was produced with the assistance of AI translation services.