The government has announced plans to train 5,000 AI personnel by 2022, but the industry is apathetic. Given the fact that the world is engaged in securing AI manpower, it is far from enough.
The 4th Industrial Revolution Commission, which is directly under the president, has deliberated on the Artificial Intelligence R&D strategy to train 5,000 AI personnel over the next five years with a fund of 2.04 billion USD.
At the core of the strategy is to cultivate ‘advanced talents’ capable of developing AI core • next generation source technologies and ‘data fusion talented individuals’ capable of creating new AI applications and services.
The 4th Industrial Revolution Committee plans to establish six Artificial Intelligence graduate schools from 2019 to 2022, and nurture 1,400 students by strengthening support for AI research at existing university research centers.
The 3,600 data fusion talented individuals will be nurtured through AI project-type education and practical human resources education. AI is a technology that is currently drawing attention as a key driver of the 4th Industrial Revolution that can bring about changes in future industrial structures and social systems.
The U.S., Japan, and China, who first began developing AI workforce, are making plans at the national level in order to preempt related technologies. Global companies such as Google and Facebook are aggressively pushing for investments in technologies and expansion of M&A in order to strengthen their competitiveness.
Global companies are focusing their attention on innovation in AI technology by securing human resources related to this technology. According to data from U.S. data analysis company ‘Payza’, US companies invested in acquiring AI manpower for one year are 237.3 million usd for Amazon, 135.6 million USD for Google, and 78.2 million USD for Microsoft.
In Paris, France, there is an AI research lab established by Facebook, while the University of Montreal in Canada has a machine learning lab by Google, and the National University of Taiwan has an AI research laboratory by NVIDIA.
In contrast, the industry pointed out that the government’s R&D strategy lacks more aggressive measures to secure talent. Furthermore, the numbers of workers with masters and doctorate in AI is absolutely insufficient.
“There are a lot of people in the world who are questioning government measures in the heat of securing AI technology. We need more aggressive countermeasures to keep up with global competition,” said industry officials.
