LG AI Research, SK Telecom and Upstage have advanced to the next stage of South Korea’s government-backed push to develop a homegrown artificial intelligence foundation model, the Science Ministry said Tuesday.
Motif Technologies was the only team eliminated, finishing last among the four contenders in the second stage of the evaluation, which combined benchmark tests, expert reviews and user assessments.
The Ministry of Science and ICT said the three remaining teams will receive expanded access to computing resources as the competition moves into its next phase, with two finalists set to be selected by the end of the year.
Benchmark tests, which accounted for 40 points of the overall evaluation, produced an average score of 22.5 across the four teams, with 4 points separating the top and bottom performers.
The gap was narrower in the 35-point expert review, where the teams averaged 28.8 points and the spread between first and fourth place was just 2.4 points. User assessments, worth 25 points, showed the biggest difference, with a five-point gap and an average score of 17.6.
The government will also step up support with graphics processing units for the remaining teams to help them develop more competitive models.
The amount of computing power provided, measured on a B200 GPU basis, will rise from the equivalent of about 768 chips in the first half of the year to around 1,000 in the second half, according to the ministry.
Further rounds of evaluation will be held before the government cuts the field from three teams to two by year-end.
yeeun@heraldcorp.com