SEOUL, Dec 5 (Reuters) – South Korea’s Industry Ministry and SoftBank’s chip unit Arm Holdings have signed an agreement to strengthen the country’s semiconductor and artificial intelligence industries, the country’s presidential policy adviser said on Friday.
Kim Yong-beom told reporters at a news conference that the memorandum of understanding includes Arm’s plan to establish a chip design school in the country to leverage its expertise in the field.
The program aims to train about 1,400 advanced chip design experts, a move Kim said would help boost the relatively weak system semiconductor and fabless sectors in Asia’s fourth-largest economy.
British chip and software company Arm licenses its chip designs and earns money through royalties.
SoftBank CEO Masayoshi Son, who met with South Korean President Lee Jae-myung on Friday, said demand for chips will increase dramatically as artificial intelligence advances, Kim quoted Son as saying.
The SoftBank CEO also pointed out that the energy sector is a weak link and South Korea does not have enough supply to support the development of artificial intelligence.
Son reiterated on Friday that he believes artificial intelligence will surpass human intelligence and that super artificial intelligence will be “10,000 times smarter than humans.”
He says it’s time to move beyond the idea that humans can control, teach or manage artificial intelligence and instead consider how to live in harmony with it.
South Korea aspires to become one of the world’s top three AI powers, and Lee has also recently held talks with other global technology leaders, including OpenAI CEO Sam Altman and Nvidia boss Jensen Huang.
In October, South Korea’s Samsung Electronics and SK Hynix signed a letter of intent to supply memory chips for the OpenAI data center to help ChatGPT developers complete its Stargate project, which is also a private plan supported by SoftBank and Oracle to build data centers.
Son is expected to meet with SK Group Chairman Choi Tae-won later on Friday to discuss cooperation in artificial intelligence and semiconductors, the Dong-A Ilbo reported.
SK Group declined to comment.
Nvidia said in late October that it would supply more than 260,000 of its most advanced artificial intelligence chips to the South Korean government and some of the country’s largest companies, including Samsung Electronics.
(Reporting by Heekyong Yang, Hyunjoo Jin and Joyce Lee; Editing by Ed Davies)
