Samsung CEO highlights AI safety research

Samsung Electronics co-CEO Kyung Kye-hyun, who oversees the tech giant's chips business, called on experts to conduct more in-depth research on the safety, trustworthiness and sustainability of artificial intelligence in line with rapid advancements in technology.

“The spotlight has recently shifted toward generative AI technology, as it provides us the potential to unlock new solutions and address long-standing challenges. But the need for in-depth research on the safety, trustworthiness and sustainability of AI is increasing at the same time,” the chip chief said in his opening speech that screened for the Samsung AI Forum in Suwon, Gyeonggi Province, Tuesday.

While over 1,000 leading academics and industry experts from around the world gathered at this year’s AI forum under the theme of “Large-scale AI for a better tomorrow,” the CEO hoped to discuss ways to create a brighter future through AI and semiconductor technologies.

At the same time, he noted that Samsung is committed to optimizing chip development and production processes using AI, while highlighting the importance of utilizing the energy consumed during the training and reasoning process more efficiently for sustainable growth of generative AI.

The CEO also voiced confidence in the tech giant playing a pivotal role in strengthening the AI ecosystem by providing critical components of AI computing systems, including High Bandwidth Memory chips.

Samsung has hosted the AI Forum since 2017, with this year's event the seventh of its kind. The annual forum serves as a platform to strengthen networks and share knowledge with prominent scholars in the AI sector to enhance Samsung's advanced semiconductor technology.

This year, top experts including Jim Keller, CEO of Toronto-based AI chip startup Tenstorrent, and Yoshua Bengio, a computer science professor at the University of Montreal, delivered keynote speeches and gathered participants' attention.

Keller introduced RISC-V, an open-source instruction set architecture used to develop custom processors for various applications, during his session titled “Own Your Silicon.” The chip industry veteran stressed that RISC-V will create new possibilities in next-generation AI through innovation in hardware structure design.

Bengio shared his latest research in a session titled “Towards a Safe AI Scientist System,” where he introduced a safe AI machine learning algorithm to prevent large language models from developing in unintended directions.

Meanwhile, Samsung Advanced Institute of Technology -- the company's research and development hub for incubating cutting-edge technologies -- unveiled plans to use AI in the tech giant's semiconductor development and talked about how the future of the chip industry will change by integrating AI. It also discussed the potential of future computing development in chip processing using AI.