On November 15, the KAIST Graduate School of AI (GSAI) held a joint information session in Seoul with other Graduate Schools of AI to explain each school’s vision, ambition, and the type of students they are looking for. During the event, KAIST GSAI unveiled its ambition to expand the program into a College of AI, with an AI-focused undergraduate program.

To foster the development of researchers with a strong background in AI and competence in the industry, the Ministry of Science and ICT selected KAIST to operate the new graduate school specializing in AI, along with Korea University and Sungkyunkwan University, this March. To further their agenda, GIST and POSTECH were added to the list in September.

Applications to the three new AI Graduate Schools for the first cohort have been very competitive. For 80 available spots, there was a total of 497 applicants, with KAIST having the lowest acceptance rate at approximately 10%. GIST and POSTECH are set to welcome their first students in 2020.

The five designated Graduate Schools organized their joint information session during an AI-themed symposium held in The K Hotel Seoul on November 15. The conference included presentations of the latest findings in the fields of “Deep Learning Probabilistic Graphical Model (PGM)”, “Neural Network based Continual Learning”, and “Generative Adversarial Network”.

Song Chong, Dean of KAIST Graduate School of AI, emphasized KAIST’s unrivaled capability in AI research. Over the past six years, 101 papers have been presented in conferences related to AI by KAIST professors. He also explained that the recent deal with Seongnam City (See Volume 173 for more details) epitomizes KAIST’s focus on AI and strong collaboration with various start-ups and industries in Korea. He added that KAIST aims to be a key stakeholder in making the Korean city the center of “Asian Silicon Valley”, and revealed KAIST’s ambition to expand the current Graduate School into a “College of AI” that will include a four-year undergraduate program by 2023.