ChatGPT, Bard, Claude. The world’s hottest and profitable chatbots are skilled on knowledge scraped from huge swaths of the web, mirroring the cultural and linguistic dominance of the English language and Western views. This has raised alarms concerning the lack of range in synthetic intelligence. There’s additionally the concern that the expertise will stay the province of a handful of American firms.
In South Korea, a technological powerhouse, companies are making the most of the expertise’s malleability to form A.I. programs from the bottom as much as deal with native wants. Some have skilled A.I. fashions with units of information wealthy in Korean language and tradition. South Korean firms say they’re constructing A.I. for Thai, Vietnamese and Malaysian audiences. Others are eyeing clients in Brazil, Saudi Arabia and the Philippines, and in industries like drugs and pharmacy.
This has fueled hopes that A.I. can change into extra numerous, work in additional languages, be custom-made to extra cultures and be developed by extra nations.
“The extra competitors is on the market, the extra programs are going to be sturdy: socially acceptable, safer, extra moral,” mentioned Byong-Tak Zhang, a pc science professor at Seoul Nationwide College.
Whereas there are some distinguished non-American A.I. firms, like France’s Mistral, the current upheaval at OpenAI, the maker of ChatGPT, has highlighted how concentrated the trade stays.
The rising A.I. panorama in South Korea is among the best and numerous on this planet, mentioned Yong Lim, a professor of legislation at Seoul Nationwide College who leads its AI Coverage Initiative. The nation’s export-driven economic system has inspired new ventures to hunt methods to tailor A.I. programs to particular firms or nations.
South Korea is properly positioned to construct A.I. expertise, builders say, given it has one of many world’s most wired populations to generate huge quantities of information to coach A.I. programs. Its tech giants have the sources to speculate closely in analysis. The federal government has additionally been encouraging: It has supplied firms with cash and knowledge that could possibly be used to coach massive language fashions, the expertise that powers A.I. chatbots.
Few different nations have the mix of capital and expertise required to develop a big language mannequin that may energy a chatbot, specialists say. They estimate that it prices $100 million to $200 million to construct a foundational mannequin, the expertise that serves as the premise for A.I. chatbots.
South Korea continues to be months behind the US within the A.I. race and will by no means absolutely catch up, because the main chatbots proceed to enhance with extra sources and knowledge.
However South Korean firms imagine they’ll compete. As a substitute of going after the worldwide market like their American opponents, firms like Naver and LG have tried to focus on their A.I. fashions to particular industries, cultures or languages as a substitute of pulling from your entire web.
“The localized technique is an inexpensive technique for them,” mentioned Sukwoong Choi, a professor of data programs on the College at Albany. “U.S. companies are targeted on general-purpose instruments. South Korean A.I. companies can goal a selected space.”
Exterior the US, A.I. prowess seems restricted in attain. In China, Baidu’s reply to ChatGPT, referred to as Ernie, and Huawei’s massive language mannequin have proven some success at dwelling, however they’re removed from dominating the worldwide market. Governments and corporations in different nations like Canada, Britain, India and Israel have additionally mentioned they’re growing their very own A.I. programs, although none has but to launch a system that can be utilized by the general public.
A couple of yr earlier than ChatGPT was launched, Naver, which operates South Korea’s most generally used search engine, introduced that it had efficiently created a big language mannequin. However the chatbot based mostly on that mannequin, Clova X, was launched solely this September, practically a yr after ChatGPT’s debut.
Nako Sung, an govt at Naver who has led the corporate’s generative A.I. venture, mentioned the timing of ChatGPT’s launch shocked him.
“Up till that time, we have been taking a conservative method to A.I. providers and simply cautiously exploring the probabilities,” Mr. Sung mentioned. “Then we realized that the timeline had been accelerated quite a bit,” he added. “We determined we needed to transfer instantly.”
Now, Naver runs an A.I. mannequin constructed for Korean language audio system from the bottom up utilizing knowledge from the South Korean authorities and from its search engine, which has scraped the nation’s web since 1999.
Clova X acknowledges Korean idioms and the newest slang — language that American-made chatbots like Bard, ChatGPT and Claude usually battle to grasp. Naver’s chatbot can also be built-in into the search engine, letting folks use the device to buy and journey.
Exterior its dwelling market, the corporate is exploring enterprise alternatives with the Saudi Arabian authorities. Japan could possibly be one other potential buyer, specialists mentioned, since Line, a messaging service owned by Naver, is used broadly there.
LG has additionally created its personal generative A.I. mannequin, the kind of synthetic intelligence able to creating authentic content material based mostly on inputs, referred to as Exaone. Since its creation in 2021, LG has labored with publishers, analysis facilities, pharmaceutical companies and medical firms to tailor its system to their knowledge units and supply them entry to its A.I. system.
The corporate is concentrating on companies and researchers as a substitute of the final consumer, mentioned Kyunghoon Bae, the director of LG A.I. Analysis. Its subsidiaries have additionally begun utilizing its personal A.I. chatbots. One of many chatbots, constructed to research chemistry analysis and chemical equations, has been utilized by researchers constructing new supplies for batteries, chemical substances and drugs.
“Fairly than letting one of the best one or two A.I. programs dominate, it’s necessary to have an array of fashions particular to a website, language or tradition,” mentioned Honglak Lee, the chief scientist of LG’s A.I. analysis arm.
One other South Korean behemoth, Samsung, final month introduced Samsung Gauss, a generative A.I. mannequin getting used internally to compose emails, summarize paperwork and translate textual content. The corporate plans to combine it into its cell phones and sensible dwelling home equipment.
Different main firms have additionally mentioned they’re growing their very own massive language fashions, making South Korea one of many few nations with so many firms constructing A.I. programs. KT, a South Korean telecommunications agency, has mentioned it’s working with a Thai counterpart, Jasmine Group, on a big language mannequin specialised within the Thai language. Kakao, which makes an eponymous tremendous app for chats, has mentioned it’s growing generative A.I. for Korean, English, Japanese, Vietnamese and Malaysian.
Nonetheless, the US’ dominance in A.I. seems safe for now. It stays to be seen how carefully nations can catch up.
“The market is convulsing; it’s very troublesome to foretell what’s going to occur,” mentioned Mr. Lim, the A.I. coverage knowledgeable. “It’s the Wild West, in a way.”