LG

LG AI Research has set the groundwork to become a ‘global AI research hub’ by establishing the ‘AI Research Center’ with SNU to research super-giant AI and foster AI talents.
 
LG AI Research is expanding the global AI research ecosystem to North America by opening the ‘LG AI Research Center, Ann Arbor’, Michigan, USA on March 22nd. ‘LG AI Research Center, Ann Arbor’ is LG’s first global AI research base directly led by Honglak Lee (Chief Scientist of AI and a professor of electrical engineering and computer science at the University of Michigan), one of the world’s top AI scholars.
 
In addition, Professor Moontae Lee of the University of Illinois, who joined LG AI Research earlier this year and is in charge of Fundamental Research Lab which studies the prior technologies of super-giant AI, will also lead the research of LG AI Research Center.
 
“Opening of the North American Center is the first step for LG AI Research to enter the global scene beyond South Korea. We will expand our line of sight and stretch points of contact to universities and research institutes around the world to facilitate a top-level research collaborations,” Said Honglak Lee, highlighting the importance of establishing a global AI research ecosystem.
 
The University of Michigan (U-M), a world-renowned university, is located in Ann Arbor, Michigan, where the ‘LG AI Research Center, Ann Arbor’ will be built. U-M possesses the world's best AI research capabilities to the extent that it was selected as one of the best AI programs in grad schools by U.S. News & World.
 
LG AI Research signed an MOU with the University of Michigan College of Engineering in February and a Master Research Agreement in March to support joint research activities on advanced AI technologies and to connect with excellent talent, and the cooperation begins in earnest with the opening of the LG AI Research Center.
 
At the opening ceremony held on the 23rd, 9 professors leading AI research at the University of Michigan including Eric Michielssen, Associate Dean of Research at the University of Michigan’s College of Engineering, and Michael Wellman, the Richard H. Orenstein Division Chair of Computer Science and Engineering (CSE), as well as LG AI Research officials— Honglak Lee and Lab Director Moontae Lee — were present. Along with several U-M faculty members, they attended to share current AI research topics and discussed future collaboration plans.
 
“Through our partnership with LG AI Research, students and faculty will be able to trade expertise with our counterparts at one of the most innovative AI research centers in the world,” said Michielssen. And Wellman said, “Our faculty and students are excited to strengthen and deepen the existing cooperation with LG AI Research, to advance highly complex and interdisciplinary AI research, in areas like machine learning, natural language processing, and compositional task generalization,” expressing great anticipation towards the LG AI Research Center, Ann Arbor. LG AI Research plans to strengthen open innovation by expanding industry-academic cooperation with several prestigious AI universities and research institutes in North America, starting with the University of Michigan.
 
LG AI Research will also strengthen its own research capabilities, such as actively recruiting North American AI talent to advance next-generation AI technology at the ‘LG AI Research Center, Ann Arbor’, the global research base. After holding a recruitment briefing session for AI major graduate students at the University of Michigan on the 23rd, the day after the opening event, LG AI Research plans to quickly expand the scope of employment to all regions of North America and lay the groundwork to become a ‘global AI research hub’.
 
The LG AI Research Center, Ann Arbor will advance AI technologies such as Deep Reinforcement Learning, 3D Scene Understanding, and Reasoning with a Large-scale Language Model and Bias & Fairness related to AI ethics, which are the basis for creating AI that thinks and judges on its own with the talents recruited from North America.
 
Meanwhile, Kwangmo Koo, the chairman and CEO of LG Corporation, said that when LG AI Research launched in December 2020, he will support the best talents and partners gathered to challenge the world to their heart’s content and make the institute to become the center of the global AI ecosystem. Thanks to this, LG AI Research announced plans to increase the number of core research personnel over 100 and to secure global AI global leadership by nurturing 1,000 AI experts within the group by 2023. As a result, the strategy of securing excellent talent and expanding the global AI research ecosystem has gained more momentum.