BEIJING, June 26, 2024 /PRNewswire/ -- A news report from China.org.cn on The Global Digital Economy Conference 2024:
The Global Digital Economy Conference (GDEC) 2024 will be held at the China National Convention Center in Beijing from July 2 to 5, 2024. On the morning of June 21, the conference's organizing committee held a news conference at the news conference hall of the Beijing Municipal Committee of the Communist Party of China and the Beijing Municipal People's Government. Leaders of the conference's hosts and organizers attended the news conference.
Approved by the State Council, the conference is themed "Opening Up a New Era of Digital Intelligence, Sharing a New Digital Future." The conference will be hosted by the Beijing Municipal People's Government and the Cyberspace Administration of China and organized by the Beijing Municipal Bureau of Economy and Information Technology, the Beijing Municipal Administration of Government Services and Data Management, the Lhasa Municipal People's Government, the Chaoyang District People's Government of Beijing Municipality, the China Association of Communication Enterprises, the China Academy of Information and Communications Technology, and the Center for International Economic and Technological Cooperation of the Ministry of Industry and Information Technology.
At the news conference, Pan Feng, a member of the Leading Party Members Group of the Beijing Bureau of Economy and Information Technology and deputy director of the bureau, pointed out that the conference will build on the successful experience of the previous three GDECs and adhere to the principle of frugality, pragmatism, and innovation to bring guests a better experience through upgrading and innovative measures. He stated that "five major platforms" would be strengthened to showcase the conference's highlights.
Highlight One: To build a solid international cooperation platform to expand the "circle of friends" of global digital economy partner cities
Last year, Beijing and 18 international cities jointly launched the Global Digital Economy Partner City Cooperation Initiative. More new global digital economy partner cities will be involved in the initiative at the conference. In addition, the Middle East Digital Economy Development Forum of the GDEC 2024 was successfully held in the United Arab Emirates on May 28, which indicates that the conference will initiate further cooperation with domestic and foreign cities to jointly create an "outbound innovation service base for Beijing-based digital economy enterprises."
Highlight Two: To build a solid collaborative development platform to bridge the digital divide by upgrading services, expanding capacity, and collecting suggestions
As a leading city in the digital economy, Beijing has played an important role in the conference. The conference featured a special forum called "Face-to-Face Dialogue on Digital Economy between East and West China" to discuss how to deepen regional digital cooperation between Beijing and Xizang, Beijing and Inner Mongolia, and Beijing and Xinjiang. Meanwhile, the Beijing-Tianjin-Hebei Think Tank Forum will also offer suggestions for the coordinated development of the digital economy in the three regions.
Highlight Three: To build a solid technological innovation platform to greatly improve the conference's scale and make it more international
The New Technology and Product Release Zone are among the new features of this year's conference. Numerous cutting-edge technologies and products will make their debut at the conference. The conference will feature six high-level forums and over forty thematic subforums, delving into various hot topics such as Internet 3.0, data elements, digital governance, and intelligent computing power. The parallel event "Digital Night" will offer attendees an audio-visual feast of technology and art using artificial intelligence technology.
Highlight Four: To build a solid industrial development platform to strive for the integration of the digital and real economy
The GDEC has always been committed to building a communication platform for enterprises, actively promoting cooperation and exchanges within the industry. It is reported that the number of enterprises participating in this conference will reach a new high. In addition, the conference will continue to release the White Paper on the Global Digital Economy to create a global wind vane regarding policymaking, the latest technology, industry trends, and application models in the digital economy.
Highlight Five: To build a solid interactive platform to better meet public needs by combining digitalization and artificial intelligence
The conference's parallel events aim to further expand the influence of the conference. For example, a meta-universe product experience event will be launched during "Beijing Digital Economy Experience Week" for the first time, and a special experience route called "Have Fun in Digital Beijing" will be unveiled. The main event will also feature the Digital Economy Immersive Experience Zone. By providing more interactive scenarios and allowing more visitors to experience digital scenarios, the conference will help stimulate the vitality and unleash the potential of digital consumption.
Besides, Shu Bilei, member of the Standing Committee of the CPC Chaoyang District Committee and deputy head of Beijing's Chaoyang District, Zhao Junsheng, deputy secretary-general of the China Association of Communication Enterprises, and Xu Pengfei, deputy secretary-general of the Lhasa Municipal People's Government provided an overview on the preparations for the various sections of the conference, focusing on venue support and the development of the local digital economy. This included updates on the progress of the Lhasa sub-venue preparations and the local digital economy's development status.
Standing at a new starting point, the GDEC 2024 will bring the global digital economy cooperation to a new level, inject new impetus into building a community with a shared future for mankind, advance high-quality, sustainable development, and create a promising future for the development of the digital economy with all related parties. Guests from all over the world are welcome to participate in this unmissable event of the digital economy!
** The press release content is from PR Newswire. Bastille Post is not involved in its creation. **
Global Digital Economy Conference 2024: Strengthening 'Five Major Platforms' to Highlight July 2-5 Event
Global Digital Economy Conference 2024: Strengthening 'Five Major Platforms' to Highlight July 2-5 Event
Global Digital Economy Conference 2024: Strengthening 'Five Major Platforms' to Highlight July 2-5 Event
SEOUL, South Korea and REDMOND, Wash., Sept. 29, 2024 /PRNewswire/ -- KT Corporation and Microsoft today unveiled a five-year multibillion-dollar partnership, which includes an investment from KT in the areas of Artificial Intelligence (AI), cloud technologies, and IT business, and a resource commitment from Microsoft in the areas of infrastructure and people. Through this partnership, the companies will propel KT's AI and ICT (AICT) transformation, and accelerate the advancement of AI services and innovation in Korea.
Following the agreement in June, KT and Microsoft have engaged in ongoing discussions to strengthen ties and outline key areas of collaboration and support. This strategic partnership is expected to drive progress in five pivotal areas: Development of customized AI solutions for Korea, delivering Korean sovereign cloud solutions, the establishment of an AI transformation (AX)-specialized service company, AI R&D capabilities advancement across Korea and KT's AICT transformation.
Developing Customized AI Solutions for Korea
KT and Microsoft will engage in engineering collaboration to develop a customized version of GPT-4o and explore developing a customized version of Microsoft's Phi family of small language models, with KT's extensive set of high-quality data around Korean culture and industries. These models will be used for both KT's internal and consumer-facing applications such as customer service chatbots, and also for building industry-specific AI solutions for B2B customers across industry verticals to best serve the needs of Korean consumers and businesses. KT will leverage Microsoft Copilot Studio and Azure AI Studio to develop custom AI agents aimed at differentiating customer experiences. KT plans to expand the development and utilization of KT-custom AI agents not only for consumer use cases in education, healthcare, and in-vehicle infotainment, but also for business applications. Importantly, Microsoft and KT will collaborate closely on further evolving KT's Responsible AI framework to help ensure the delivery of safe AI services for the Korea market.
"We are delighted with the partnership between KT and Microsoft, which presents a valuable opportunity to enhance our digital competitiveness," said Shinhan Bank, a leading financial group in Korea. "By utilizing the KT GPT model, specialized in Korean language and financial services, we aim to deliver innovative AI-driven services to the domestic financial consumers."
Delivering Korean sovereign cloud solutions
KT and Microsoft are partnering to develop and launch Secure Public Cloud services, which is KT's sovereign cloud solution built on Microsoft Cloud for Sovereignty for Korean-regulated industries. KT will drive its Secure Public Cloud business with support from Microsoft, enabling public sector and regulated industry customers to use new platform capabilities for securing data and workloads, providing access to the latest cloud and AI features available on Azure and helping them comply with local privacy and regulatory requirements.
Accelerating AI transformation through AX-Specialized service company
KT will establish a new AX-specialized service company to help businesses in Korea transform with the latest AI innovation. The forthcoming KT's AX-specialized service company will provide advanced Microsoft Cloud and AI expertise and solutions to the Korean market, with plans to expand to broader markets, including ASEAN. Microsoft will support this initiative over the next three years with professional consulting resources to build core practices and capabilities for the new entity.
Advancing AI R&D capabilities across Korea
Microsoft will support KT in establishing a co-innovation center aimed at accelerating Microsoft technology-driven AI transformation in the Korean market. This center will help businesses build, develop and prototype new AI solutions with Microsoft technology and KT's AI specialists. Furthermore, KT will invest in fostering new AI startups and developing a partner ecosystem to support nationwide AI transformation. Microsoft will support this initiative by providing Azure credits and technical expertise. For the future of technology collaboration, KT and Microsoft Research (MSR)'s research leaders and business visionaries will explore high-impact research initiatives in network modernization, AI for healthcare, and industry AI adoption and further collaborate with leading academic institutions partnering with KT.
Accelerating KT's AICT Transformation with organization-wide upskilling
KT will migrate and modernize existing IT workloads including mission-critical applications, to Microsoft Azure while developing a new data platform and AI services powered by Microsoft Fabric and Azure OpenAI Service. This collaboration will enhance KT's overall IT infrastructure, making it more agile, resilient, and secure, driving innovation and elevating the customer experience through intelligent automation. KT also intends to deploy Microsoft 365 Copilot and GitHub Copilot, for all KT employees and developers to supercharge productivity of the entire business. Microsoft will assist KT in equipping more than 19,000 employees with cloud and AI skills and enabling more than 5,800 AX specialists to lead a successful transformation through KT group-wide skilling and co-engineering support.
"The partnership with Microsoft presents a pivotal opportunity, not only for technological collaboration but also for expanding Korea's AI foundation and driving transformative innovation across industries and daily life," said KT CEO Young-Shub Kim. "Leveraging this strategic partnership, we aim to rapidly evolve into an AICT company with unparalleled competitiveness in domestic and global markets." 
"Our strategic partnership brings together KT's industry expertise with the power of our entire tech stack, from Azure AI to Microsoft 365 Copilot," said Satya Nadella, Chairman and CEO of Microsoft. "Together, we will help accelerate the AI transformation of Korean organizations across the private and public sector and build new AI-powered experiences for millions of consumers."
About KT Corporation
KT Corporation is a leading company in Korea's telecommunications and ICT industries. By building an AX innovation platform based on differentiated AI, Big Data and Cloud competitiveness, and offering it with outstanding network infrastructure, KT is driving evolution into an AICT (AI and ICT) company.
About Microsoft 
Microsoft (Nasdaq "MSFT" @microsoft) creates platforms and tools powered by AI to deliver innovative solutions that meet the evolving needs of our customers. The technology company is committed to making AI available broadly and doing so responsibly, with a mission to empower every person and every organization on the planet to achieve more.
For more information, press only:
Microsoft Media Relations, WE Communications for Microsoft, (425) 638-7777, rapidresponse@we-worldwide.com
** The press release content is from PR Newswire. Bastille Post is not involved in its creation. **
KT Corporation and Microsoft Take 'Giant Step' to Accelerate AI Innovation in Korea
