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LG research director calls for 'strong foundational AI technology' at APEC

Published: 30 Oct. 2025, 17:58 Updated: 30 Oct. 2025, 20:36

LEE JAE-LIM
[email protected]

LG AI Research Director Lee Hong-lak speaks as a panelist for a session held under the APEC CEO Summit held at Gyeongju Arts Center, North Gyeongsang on Oct. 30. [JOONGANG ILBO]

GYEONGJU, North Gyeongsang — Korean firms must keep developing proprietary foundational models and refining data training approaches to sustain progress on artificial intelligence (AI), even as some argue Korea is falling behind, LG AI Research Director Lee Hong-lak said on Thursday.

LG AI Research, a research and development organization under LG Group, aims to deploy AI in LG’s core affiliates like LG Electronics, LG Chem, LG U+, LG CNS and LG Energy Solution.

“We will build powerful foundational models and then adapt them into expert-level AI that is tailored to specific industries,” Lee said during a keynote session at the APEC CEO Summit at the Gyeongju Arts Center in North Gyeongsang. The session was themed “Next-Generation AI Roadmap for Sustainable Innovation.”

“By building strong foundational AI technology, we accumulate deep expertise in data collection, model training and system design, allowing us to efficiently develop highly specialized and high-value AI solutions across multiple fields,” he continued.

Lee stressed that companies should go beyond relying on open-source language models, which is why the institution is developing an AI-powered automatic data generation platform that can be fed to proprietary models for training. The platform is known as Exaone Data Foundry.

“If you take a ‘black box’ [referring to open-source] open model and fine-tune it only with your own data, users frequently encounter issues such as performance degradation and loss of previously learned abilities. Our platform will help our partners and customers avoid these challenges by providing automated tools for generating high-quality training data that is well-matched to specialized use cases.”

Meanwhile, Google Asia Pacific's Chief Marketing Officer Simon Kahn emphasized that global partnerships are needed to spur technology development.

“We’re building an integrated infrastructure together with partners across APEC economies,” Kahn noted. “In Korea, LG AI Research and Kakao Healthcare use Google Cloud’s AI infrastructure, and Samsung supplies the critical memory components to power our AI chips.

Kahn emphasized the importance of ensuring AI supports local languages and solves locally relevant challenges, noting that Google is already providing AI customer service solutions for Korean mobile carriers such as SK Telecom and LG U+. Google has also been working with the Ministry of SMEs and Startups since 2019 to help local developers expand their innovations globally.

Kahn emphasized that sustaining progress in AI requires a shared commitment: Be bold in innovation, responsible in ensuring benefits are broadly distributed and work together through globally aligned regulatory frameworks.

BY LEE JAE-LIM [[email protected]]