Center Director Ha Jung-woo: "The Era of Full-Scale AI Agents Will Begin... Semiconductor Demand Continues to Rise"

Ha Jung-woo, head of the Naver Cloud AI Innovation Center, predicted that the era of artificial intelligence (AI) agents will begin in the first half of next year.

At the 9th Advanced Sensor Forum held on the 26th at El Tower in Yangjae, Seoul, Ha delivered a keynote speech stating, "The era of AI agents is already approaching," and explained, "Google has already quickly integrated this into Google Assistant, and within this year, Apple Intelligence will be linked with ChatGPT-4o. We expect the full-fledged AI agent era to open in the first half of next year."

He continued, "AI agents are expected to bring productivity innovation," adding, "The demand for AI semiconductors and memory to effectively operate such generative AI will inevitably continue to increase."

Ha also emphasized, "The whole world is going all-in on AI and making efforts to expand its influence," and highlighted, "Sovereign AI, which maintains AI independence status, is becoming increasingly important." Sovereign AI is a compound of 'sovereign,' meaning autonomy, and AI, referring to artificial intelligence, meaning 'AI with sovereignty' or 'AI sovereignty.'

He further explained, "Sovereign AI is AI that accurately understands each country's culture, history, and values," and added, "Our country has opportunities when expanding overseas by creating AI and data centers tailored to other countries, as we have our own cloud companies starting from AI semiconductor infrastructure and have developed and applied AI in industries."

Meanwhile, at the forum hosted by the Ministry of Trade, Industry and Energy, presentations on smart life technologies to address population decline and aging issues were also held.

Hwang Hee, CEO of Kakao Healthcare, explained the convergence of digital healthcare and the sensor industry. In the technical seminar, Professor Park Jae-hong of Seoul National University and Lee Sang-hoon, head of RS Automation Research Institute, introduced technology trends and development directions in the robotics field. Leading domestic sensor companies DX&VS and Sentech Korea shared trends in core sensor technology development in the healthcare sector.

Jeon Yoon-jong, president of the Korea Evaluation Institute of Industrial Technology (KEIT), stated, "We will listen more closely to the voices from research sites and expand support for innovative technology development through research and development (R&D) planning, evaluation, and management centered on industrial demand."

Kim Jung-hoe, vice chairman of the Korea Semiconductor Industry Association, said, "We will actively strive to ensure that field opinions are reflected in government policies," and added, "In particular, we will create various opportunities to strengthen close cooperation among industry, academia, and research institutes so that new tasks reflecting new technologies and market demands can be derived."