Science ministry proposes 9 trillion 430.8 billion won AI budget for 2027

The Ministry of Science and ICT allocated 9 trillion 430.8 billion won to its proposed AI budget for 2027. Materials obtained by Democratic Party lawmaker Lee Ju-hee, a member of the National Assembly's Science, ICT, Broadcasting and Communications Committee, show that performance and infrastructure, including model development, computing such as graphics processing units (GPUs), and data construction, account for 6 trillion 149 billion won, or 65.2% of the total.

Safety and trust received an allocation of 27.4 billion won, representing 0.3% of the total budget. This category includes AI safety assessments and verification, red teaming, deepfake responses, and ethics and impact assessments.

The distinction between the two categories follows functional criteria proposed by the lawmaker's office. The ministry classified individual projects using those criteria before submitting the materials.

The performance and infrastructure budget increased by 116% from this year, while the safety and trust budget rose by 36%. The 3 trillion 850 billion won allocated to GPU server expansion alone amounts to roughly 140 times the entire safety and trust budget.

Next year's safety and trust budget consists of three projects. It allocates 15.2 billion won to AI safety technology R&D, 10.1 billion won to establishing a foundation for safe AI use, and 2.1 billion won to establishing a foundation for AI reliability and the industrial ecosystem.

AI safety addresses risks such as AI escaping human control and is distinct from AI security, which protects against external attacks such as hacking. Even including the 206.4 billion won AI security budget, the combined share is about 2.5% of the total AI budget.

Lee Ju-hee called for the safety budget to be raised to at least 1% of the total AI budget. She also advocated developing domestic capacity to verify high-performance models from abroad and taking a leading role in international cooperation on AI safety.