LG AI Research Institute Unveils First Research Results on 'Explainable AI' at International Conference

[Asia Economy Reporter Suyeon Woo] LG’s dedicated artificial intelligence (AI) organization, LG AI Research, has unveiled its first research achievements since its launch through the world’s most prestigious AI conference, the Association for the Advancement of Artificial Intelligence (AAAI). The innovative AI technology either explains the basis of AI decisions in a way humans can easily understand or reduces memory usage while maintaining performance.

On the 25th, LG AI Research announced that it presented two papers in the fields of 'Explainable AI' and 'Continual Learning' at the conference. AAAI is a globally authoritative AI conference where leading AI research institutions worldwide present papers annually, allowing assessment of each country’s AI competitiveness.

All the research papers were conducted jointly with the University of Toronto in Canada, where LG co-established the 'Toronto AI Lab' in 2018. Moreover, this marks the first achievement since LG officially launched LG AI Research as a dedicated AI organization last year, making it highly significant.

LG AI Research’s 'Explainable AI' refers to technology that not only provides results but logically explains the basis on which the results were derived so that humans can easily understand. For example, instead of simply informing whether there is an abnormality in a specific body part after analyzing X-ray images, the AI explains in detail the reasons on the image that led to the judgment of abnormality. This technology is a core element in developing AI that assists or replaces human decision-making in fields such as healthcare, finance, and law.

LG AI Research, in collaboration with Professor Konstantinos Plataniotis’s team at the University of Toronto, has focused on 'Explainable AI' technology research, improving the accuracy and fidelity of explanations compared to existing technologies, and developed it for use in areas related to image recognition. LG explained that it is meaningful that a domestic company has achieved results in a field where even global companies like Google remain at the early research stage.

Head Researcher Bae Gyeonghun of LG AI Research Institute is introducing LG's new AI technology.
Photo by LG

'Continual Learning' is a technology that enables AI to learn data sequentially. Similar to humans using short-term memory, it stores important past data and allows comprehensive judgment based on newly learned content.

One of the biggest challenges in AI learning has been that memory usage surges when learning large amounts of data, and reducing data volume lowers accuracy. The technology announced by LG AI Research reduces the memory used during AI learning while improving learning performance by up to 40% compared to existing methods.

Baek Gwang-hoon, head of LG AI Research, said, "Our goal is to advance AI technology research so that customers can directly experience technological progress," adding, "We will continuously recruit young AI talents and nurture 1,000 AI experts by 2023 to secure world-class AI competitiveness."