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Global AI Frontiers Symposium 2026 Brings Frontier AI Leaders to Seoul on July 3
National AI Research Lab (NAIRL), together with the Global AI Frontier Lab, will host the Global AI Frontiers Symposium 2026 on Friday, July 3, at the Westin Seoul Parnas. Following the inaugural symposium last year, this second edition convenes under the theme “AI Beyond Intelligence: Into the Real World,” examining how artificial intelligence is moving beyond theoretical possibility to take shape in the real world.
The symposium will bring together key figures from leading global AI companies including OpenAI, Anthropic, and Perplexity, alongside scholars from world-renowned research institutions such as France’s PRAIRIE Institute and Canada’s Vector Institute. In the morning, Leslie Pack Kaelbling, Panasonic Professor at MIT, will deliver the Academy Keynote on “Rational Robots,” while Noam Brown, VP of Research at OpenAI, will give the Industry Keynote on “Implications of Large-Scale Test-Time Compute,” charting the frontier of AI research and industry.
The keynotes will be followed by a deep-dive panel discussion on “Global AI Leadership: Academia-Industry-Government Collaboration.” Moderated by Kee-Eung Kim, Director of NAIRL, the panel will feature Kaelbling, Brown, Kyunghyun Cho, Director of the Global AI Frontier Lab (NYU), and Emily Black, Professor at NYU, who will explore avenues for collaboration across academia, industry, and government.
The afternoon will feature six specialized tracks running in parallel: Large Language Models & Agentic AI (Chair: Jungseul Ok, POSTECH), Multimodal AI (Chair: Changhee Lee, Korea University), AI for Science (Chair: Jong Chul Ye, KAIST), Physical AI & Embodied Intelligence (Chair: Hyunjung Shim, KAIST), AI for Life (Chair: Jinyoung Yeo, Yonsei University), and Trustworthy, Safe & Governed AI (Chair: Albert No, Yonsei University). Presenters include Woohyung Lim, Head of LG AI Research; Morita June, APAC Head of Perplexity; and Myuhng-Joo Kim, Executive Director of the Korea AI Safety Institute, among other researchers and industry leaders from Korea and abroad.
NAIRL is Korea’s largest industry-academia-research-government AI consortium, established in October 2024 with support from the Ministry of Science and ICT and the Institute of Information & Communications Technology Planning & Evaluation (IITP). It brings together four universities (KAIST, Korea University, Yonsei University, and POSTECH) and has signed MOUs with institutions including Japan’s RIKEN, Canada’s IVADO and Vector Institute, France’s PRAIRIE Institute, and Kazakhstan’s Gov4C, strengthening its ties with the global AI research ecosystem.
The full program, detailed track lineup, and registration information are available on the official website.