'The Cartographer of the Brain'
Samsung Electronics has appointed Sebastian Seung, a professor at Princeton University who is regarded as one of the world’s most renowned experts in artificial intelligence, as the head of Samsung Research, an integrated research organization of Samsung Electronics.
Samsung Research consists of 15 R&D centers in three countries including Korea, and seven global AI research centers in five countries — Korea, the United States, the United Kingdom, Russia and Canada. Seung will oversee research on future technology development and technology convergence carried out by these institutes.
Seung is known as a world-class scholar who pioneered brain-based AI research. Described as "the cartographer of the brain," he has been since 2014 a professor in computer science and neuroscience at Princeton University's Neuroscience Institute at the Jeff Bezos Center in Neural Dynamics, where he directs the Seung Labs. Before, he worked at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology as a full professor in computational neuroscience in the Department of Brain and Cognitive Sciences and as a professor in physics. He has also worked as a research scientist at the Bell Labs.
In 2018, Samsung Electronics appointed Seung as a chief research scientist (CRS), a vice president level position at Samsung Research. Later Seung worked as a consultant on establishing Samsung Electronics' AI strategy, helping the company establish global AI centers and recruit excellent AI researchers.
Samsung Electronics has been promoting AI, 5G telecommunications and automotive semiconductors as future growth drivers. The company’s vice chairman Lee Jae-yong has been particularly interested in AI. Lee visited Europe and North America in 2018 and interacted with global scholars in the AI field. In November 2019, he met with Seung to discuss future directions of AI development and Samsung Electronics' AI strategies.
In addition, Lee has continued to interact with global business leaders, including Softbank chairman Masayoshi Son and Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella, to discuss ways to cooperate in the AI field.
Samsung Electronics has set up global AI research centers in seven regions in five countries — Korea, the United States, Britain, Russia and Canada — and is expanding open innovation with global scholars, including Prof. Yoshua Bengio. Lee recruited Daniel Lee, a professor at the University of Pennsylvania, in June 2018, and hired Harvard University Prof. Gu-Yeon Wei as a fellow in 2019.
However, the influence of Korea as a whole, including Samsung Electronics, on the global AI market has yet to reach the global level. According to global market research firm CB Insights’ analysis, global AI startup investment in the first quarter of 2020 reached US$8.4 billion, up 42 percent on year. By country, the United States ranked first with 41 percent, followed by China with 10.5 percent, Britain with 7.9 percent and Japan with 5.5 percent. In fact, the United States and China have formed a two-runner race.
Against this backdrop, some predict that Samsung Electronics may seek to jumpstart its AI technology development via large-scale M&As. IT industry insiders expect that the amount of investment in AI startups and partners by the five U.S. IT giants (Microsoft, Amazon, Alphabet, Apple, and Facebook) will hit an all-time high in the second quarter of 2020.