Samsung Electronics sets up AGI lab in Silicon Valley

A man passes by Samsung Electronics' shop in Seoul, South Korea, Wednesday, Jan. 31, 2024. [AP/YONHAP]

Samsung Electronics has set up a chip lab in Silicon Valley dedicated to artificial general intelligence (AGI) as the chipmaker looks to take the lead in the next-generation AI chip technology.

AGI refers to an AI system where a machine pursues the way humans learn and think. Chips that power it should have high computing power with low energy consumption.

Samsung Electronics confirmed local reports on Tuesday that it established a new lab, dubbed the AGI Computing Lab, in Silicon Valley, which will be headed by a former Google engineer Woo Dong-hyuk.

Woo worked as an engineer at Intel and Google before joining Samsung Electronics in 2023 as a senior vice president.

He has Ph.D. degrees in electrical and computer engineering from The Georgia Institute of Technology and led Google's TPU (Tensor Processing Unit) project.

"I am happy to share that I'm building up a brand-new lab at Samsung Semiconductors," Woo said on his SNS account last month.

The lab is currently recruiting software engineers.

"The AGI Computing Lab is dedicated to solving the complex system-level challenges posed by the growing demands of future AI/ML [machine learning] workloads," Samsung's recruitment post read.

"We aim to revolutionize the way AI/ML applications are deployed and executed, ultimately contributing to the advancement of AGI in an affordable and sustainable manner."

Big Tech companies are betting big on AGI.

Mark Zuckerberg of Facebook said last month that Meta's new goal is to build AGI, joining a slew of other companies like OpenAI and Anthropic, which have already outspokenly taken on the mission of developing what is considered the holy grail of AI.

BY JIN EUN-SOO [jin.eunsoo@joongang.co.kr]