South Korea's Ministry of Science and ICT will begin fully using a budget review-focused artificial intelligence system to allocate and adjust the national research and development (R&D) budget from this year. It will apply AI from a company participating in an independent AI foundation model project to strengthen review efficiency.

On May 14, the ministry stressed it will use the budget review-focused AI to shift to a data-based, scientific budget review system. The AI was named "Yeon-ye-in". The name is derived from the initial letters of "R&D budget review AI" in Korean. The goal is to raise the efficiency and expertise of budget reviews.

The AI deployment reflects the intent of Bae Kyung-hoon (배경훈), deputy prime minister and minister of science and ICT. Since taking office last year, Bae has proposed using AI to improve the efficiency and expertise of national R&D budget reviews. The Ministry's Office of Science and Technology Innovation developed the budget review-focused AI based on Upstage's "Solar Open" model, one of the companies participating in the independent AI foundation project.

The budget review-focused AI was built through collaboration among the ministry, the Korea Institute of Science and Technology Information (KISTI) and the Electronics and Telecommunications Research Institute (ETRI). It was trained on data such as budget request documents, planning reports and expert reviewers' opinions for about 5,000 national R&D projects accumulated over the past 5 years. It also pursued an application programming interface link with the National Science & Technology Information Service (NTIS) research performance dataset, which totals 12.43 million cases.

When a user enters conversational queries in the form of a large language model (LLM), it immediately generates tailored information and draft review text based on vast pre-trained data. To serve as an "intelligent assistant" supporting the entire national R&D budget review process, it includes intelligent similarity and duplication analysis, automation of administrative processes and draft generation, real-time technical information provision and project summaries, and collaboration features for project reviews.

The ministry said it will use the rollout to push in earnest to create a paperless budget review environment. It will digitise large volumes of printed materials and administrative documents, and use the budget review-focused AI screen for key information. It expects this to also contribute to practising carbon neutrality.

Bae said the ministry "took the lead in introducing AI specialised for its own work through additional training of an independent AI foundation model." He said it will start a pilot application this year and develop it so the budget review-focused AI can be used across the broader process in which ministries plan R&D projects and request budgets.