▲ Deputy Prime Minister and Minister of Science and ICT Bae Gyung-hoon delivers a commemorative speech at the launch ceremony for the Everyone's AI Growth Ladder Project held at the National Gwangju Science Museum in Gwangsan-gu, Gwangju-Jeonnam, on the morning of the 3rd.
A nationwide AI growth infrastructure designed to seamlessly connect learning with verification—ranging from citizens encountering AI for the first time to those dreaming of service development and startups—has officially set sail.
The Ministry of Science and ICT held the launch ceremony for the "Everyone's AI Growth Ladder Project" today at the National Gwangju Science Museum, declaring the integrated opening of "Everyone's AI Learning Center," "Everyone's AI Lab," and "Everyone's AI Lounge."
The "Everyone's AI Growth Ladder Project" was established to integrate previously operated individual AI education, development, and verification infrastructures into a single step-by-step growth system aimed at "learning, developing, and scaling up."
Deputy Prime Minister and Minister of Science and ICT Bae Gyung-hoon stated, "The era has arrived where citizens must learn AI as easily as Hangeul and utilize it well based on that foundation. Everyone's AI Growth Ladder will be the first step toward creating a basic AI society where anyone can easily use AI and everyone can enjoy its benefits."
"Everyone's AI Learning Center" is an online AI education portal that connects and provides public and private AI educational content.
Available to anyone from elementary, middle, and high school students to university students, youths, and the general public, it recommends customized educational courses tailored to each user's areas of interest and learning level through generative AI-based chatbot searches.
Government-operated educational platforms such as EBS, School AI, K-MOOC, STEP, AI & Digital Learning Centers, and Small Business Knowledge Learning Centers are currently linked. The scope of integration with private platforms is scheduled to expand step-by-step starting in August, while personalized services such as learning history management and customized curation will also be enhanced.
"Everyone's AI Lab" is an online platform where users can directly develop AI services without cost or technical barriers.
It provides a one-stop, full-cycle support system ranging from idea proposals and development infrastructure provision to performance sharing and startup linkage.
Users are provided with a natural language-based vibe coding environment, tokens for subscribing to generative AI models, private cloud services, and AI development support tools.
Users can also utilize 99,000 public and private data sets and 13,000 APIs, and development consulting is operated through the specialized technical support center.
The government will first provide free AI tokens worth 40,000 won per person to 30,000 people on a first-come, first-served basis by the end of the year.
"Everyone's AI Lounge" is an offline base where users can directly build and verify AI services on-site.
Built this year across 5 regional areas including the Seoul metropolitan area, Gangwon, Chungcheong, Gyeongsang, Jeolla, and Jeju, it helps beginners develop AI services through close coaching by "AI Sherpas (experts)."
Outstanding development teams discovered in the labs and lounges will receive intensive support to lead to youth startups through early-stage consulting and commercialization support in legal, marketing, and technical fields.
Aside from the trial tokens, intensive token support will also be operated for teams with commercialization potential.
Two hundred teams selected through an open contest will receive tokens worth between 1 million won and up to 3 million won per team, and outstanding projects will be pushed toward commercialization linkage.
Attendees at today's launch ceremony included Deputy Prime Minister Bae Gyung-hoon, Jeonnam-Gwangju Unified Special City National Assembly members Jung Jun-ho, Lim Moon-young, and Cho In-chul, Safety and People's Livelihood Vice Mayor Ko Kwang-wan, Korea Intelligence Society Agency President Kim Hyung-chul, Korea Foundation for the Advancement of Science and Creativity President Jung Woosung (Jung Woosung), alongside local students and youths.
An "AI Development Resources Delivery Ceremony" was also held, where Deputy Prime Minister Bae handed over a symbolic object shaped like computer circuits to signify the provision of core resources such as tokens necessary for AI development to a youth representative.
A youth preparing for employment at the AI Academy received the resources as a national representative.
Deputy Prime Minister Bae Gyung-hoon emphasized, "AI utilization capability is a new essential competency that every citizen must possess and a core of national competitiveness. We will firmly establish a virtuous cycle of infrastructure leading from learning and development to on-site verification and value creation."
He added, "We will densely lay the foundation for 'AI for Everyone' so that the benefits of AI do not stop at a specific class or region, but reach all citizens."
(Photo: Yonhap News)
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