South Korea To Launch Universal Basic AI Chatbot (theregister.com) 13
An anonymous reader quotes a report from The Register: South Korea's government has posted a tender seeking suppliers to build a universal basic AI chatbot, and an AI agent for government services. The "AI for everyone" plan calls for private entities to create and operate the AI systems under contracts that expire in the year 2031. Bid documents reveal that Seoul will provide up to 256 Nvidia B200 GPUs to successful bidders. Winners must match government funding. The aim of the policy is to ensure that every resident of South Korea can access a free-to-use quality AI chatbot, a tool Seoul has decided no local should be without.
The tender also calls for creation of an agentic system that allows citizens to interact with government services. South Korea's government wants to ensure that residents can always access a locally hosted and operated service, to reduce reliance on overseas providers and ensure that AI services reflect local culture. Successful bidders must therefore use locally developed AI models as the foundation for the services. Bidders have until August 11th to file their proposals. South Korean media reports suggest local tech giants Kakao, Naver, SK Telecom, and LG are all keen to participate.
The tender also calls for creation of an agentic system that allows citizens to interact with government services. South Korea's government wants to ensure that residents can always access a locally hosted and operated service, to reduce reliance on overseas providers and ensure that AI services reflect local culture. Successful bidders must therefore use locally developed AI models as the foundation for the services. Bidders have until August 11th to file their proposals. South Korean media reports suggest local tech giants Kakao, Naver, SK Telecom, and LG are all keen to participate.
Interesting (Score:3)
This will probably provide the first systematic data on use by regular people for everyday things. If it works and if there is somebody willing to bid.
"This is a kindness" (Score:3)
And thus the beginning of shifting the entire government bureaucracy to AI?
Who tests this? (Score:3)
Re:Who tests this? (Score:4, Insightful)
Re: Who tests this? (Score:2)
Re: Who tests this? (Score:2)
Given that it's open, universities will flock to it. Its openness will at least allow biases to become public knowledge.
China? (Score:2)
Maybe China can give them those chatbots from the earlier story today.
Money To Burn (Score:2)
Apparently South Korea has money to burn on near useless shit. Fine for them, it's not my tax dollars. But, any fuckface thinking that this is a good spend for my taxes needs to have a session with a cluebat.
Re: (Score:2)
Useless? To whom? This is being run by the government. It will provide the advice the government desires it to provide. It will collect the information the government chooses to collect.
In principle this could lead to an ideal outcome, but that presumes that all controlling parties have consistent good will and excellent foresight. Not something I expect of any entity.
Re: (Score:2)
Clever (Score:2)
Providing a free of charge service helps to avoid people giving all their data to large companies (of which most are located in other countries).
One candidate could be LG. They already published models that were quite strong for their time. The EXAONE 4.0 models were good at coding.
Interesting (Score:1)