Naver CEO emphasizes sovereign AI for cultural diversity

The head of Naver Corp., the operator of South Korea's biggest internet portal, on Friday stressed the importance of sovereign artificial intelligence (AI) to promote diversity in a world where AI affects how people think. "Naver will provide necessary technologies for building sovereign AI for different nations and institutions to add more diversity in the era of AI," Choi Soo-yeon said in a business forum hosted by the Korea Chamber of Commerce and Industry, a major business lobby, on the southern island of Jeju. Choi said sovereign AI, which understands different cultural and historical context, is crucial in an era where AI tends to give standardized answers to people's questions as if they are the "right" answers. She highlighted Naver's potential to lead an AI technology initiative in non-English speaking regions, Choi said, noting South Korea is the only country other than China that has developed a generative AI model from scratch and applied it to various services in Asia. Choi mentioned that Na ver has been promoting this vision to help different countries develop a sovereign AI tailored to their unique cultures and languages. Last month, the company's founder, Lee Hae-jin met, with Jensen Huang, the CEO of global AI chip leader Nvidia, in the U.S. and discussed the AI sovereignty issue. Source: Yonhap News Agency